LinkedIn for Contract Recruiters

One of my contacts sent me this question and I posted it on LinkedIn:

I’d be interested to know your thoughts on the benefits for ‘external’ / agency recruiters working a contract market for linked in within this environment? My colleagues working a perm market use linked in for finding good candidates mostly and I have used it to vouch for people’s ability via recommendations.

So I thought it might be useful to share the responses:

I also know that a good many head hunters use linkedin to source candidates for perm assignments. As one working as a career consultant (ie assisting the candidate), I would be delighted to know that they were getting some profile publicity from recruiters for contract or interim work.
Anthony

I’ve used LinkedIn to attract candidates for both Contract and Perm roles.  Personally, I think that the benefit of LinkedIn is being able to tap into passive candidates easily and quickly – most of which are employed on a permanent basis and I think would be reluctant to accept a contract role unless it was going to be highly beneficial in the long term.

I’ve had success from using LinkedIn to fill perm roles however, no success with the contracts. Although I know a contact of mine did manage to find the perfect candidate for an IT Contract role via LinkedIn, I guess that once again, it all comes down to the sector and level that you’re recruiting at.
Sean

The Professional Contractors Group ( PCG ) has a group on Linked In with 1200 members, just less than 10% of its membership.

We have Professional Contractor and Freelance clients using Linked In, but its certainly not the “standard” which we find strange as in my opinion it seems like a great platform on which to build a profile for recruiters to see.
Phil

My question is still “open” so any additional feedback either there or here on the blog would be appreciated.