A common misconception of Social Media sites is that you have to spend a lot of time to get anything out of them. But according to some contract staffing recruiters we’ve spoken to, you can really get a lot of value for a very small investment of time.
According to Mike McDonough of General Search and Recruitment, spending as little as 30 minutes every other day on the site is more than enough.
“Don’t put more into it,” McDonough said. “You’ll get lost chasing a lot of stuff that’s not valuable.”
In fact, just 30 minutes in LinkedIn resulted in one particularly lucrative placement for McDonough. He mentioned to a newer client that he was able to do contract placements. The client eventually grew to the point that they needed contract help and turned to McDonough. Once he had the job order, he used the Advance Search feature of LinkedIn to look for people with specific skills in the insurance industry and within a specific zip code area. He then used the InMail feature to contact seven people who had relevant experience, asking if they or someone they knew might be interested in a contract assignment. Five people contacted him back, and one ended up being the person he placed. He had the candidate on contract for five months and then converted the position to a direct placement.
“I earned $19,000 off 30 minutes in LinkedIn,” McDonough said. ”To me, that’s a pretty good investment.”
Here are a few of McDonough’s tips from the trenches:
- Schedule time to spend using LinkedIn as a recruitment tool, but not too much time. Again, he only recommends spending 30 minutes every other day.
- Join Groups – That’s where the best candidates are.
- Activate saved searches within LinkedIn. This will yield 15-20 candidates per day.
- Don’t let your LinkedIn time take up phone time.
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