Many jobs are found using LinkedIn as a job searching, advertising and networking tool.  I am surprised how many recruitment consultants aren’t using this powerful tool to its potential.  Recently, I was delighted to be asked to teach the staff of a Hampshire based recruitment consultancy how to exploit LinkedIn.

The recruitment consultants had two reasons for using LinkedIn – to advertise themselves and their company as experts in their field and to find potential candidates to fulfill vacancies.

We created an individual profile for each member of the team and also created a company profile that they were all linked to.  It was interesting for me, to get a slightly different perspective on how the profile should look, from people who were experts in looking at CVs.

Update: 20th October I’ve just noticed this article from Computer Weekly stating that 25% of FTSE 100 Companies hire through LinkedIn.

Fortunately they agreed with my ideas regarding how the headline and summary should look – though they suggested that it was  a good idea to mention any past ‘household name’ companies that you had worked with/for in the summary rather than just as part of the ‘experience’ section.

There was a general consensus among the group that they should keep their contacts private from their network.  Generally you can see all the contacts of anybody that you are directly connected to.  My group of recruitment consultants were very concerned that this would comprise the privacy of their contacts, so we changed this setting (by clicking settings > connection browse).

We talked about the potential to upgrade their account to the premium level of LinkedIn.  This currently costs from $50 / month.  This gives access to more profile results and allows you to see full profiles even if you do not have a connection to the person.  Interestingly they felt that at least initially they would spend the time to build up their own networks and groups to contact people.

It was felt that the costs to advertise jobs on LinkedIn was very reasonable compared to other internet sites and this was an area that they intended to exploit.

It was great to see that before I had left the client, the consultants were already building their network and finding suitable candidates. If you are a recruitment company, will you be using LinkedIn?

I have recently bought a Kodak Zi8 camera.  This is an HD video camera about the size of a phone.  The Kodak Zi8 has a built in microphone but unlike many of its competitors, it also has a jack for an external microphone so you can get a better sound quality if required.  The Kodak Zi8 has an external SD card – so you can get many hours of video before needing to upload it.  A feature I haven’t made use of yet is a connection to a tripod.  In theory, I could video myself presenting by connecting the external microphone and setting the camera up on a tripod – I have to admit a preference to being behind the camera though.  The camera cost £138 including a 16MB SD card.

But why bother, you may be saying – what is the use of yet another gadget?

I have used the camera to record customer testimonials at the end of a workshop – just 30 second snippets.  Returning home, the camera comes with basic editing software and easy upload to YouTube and my business Facebook page. I can then copy the embedded code from YouTube and add them to my website.  Tweeting about the videos, including them in an update status in LinkedIn, including them in my newsletter and blog and you can see how many people have the opportunity to see other people talking about my courses.  A powerful example of joined up use of social media.

I’ve been trying HootSuite out for a few weeks now and my mind is definitely made up.  All our training courses will be changing to HootSuite from now on.  It is much easier to teach and I like having the scheduled tweets in the same place rather than having to teach another tool.  We can concentrate on why and how to use Twitter rather than having the management tool get in the way.