LinkedIn’s new recruitment tool set to benefit start-ups

Professional networking site LinkedIn has launched a new feature to help recruiters better manage their talent leads, which could enable start-ups to reduce the time spent recruiting staff.

Currently, the recruitment process involves monitoring social media channels for talent leads, gathering resumes from multiple job board services and communicating with potential hires.

The idea behind LinkedIn’s new service, titled Talent Pipeline, is to streamline all recruitment elements into a single database, which can be searched, organised and monitored.

The service enables recruiters to import leads and resumes from any source, which can then be organised using tags, sources, status updates and custom search reports.

Because Talent Pipeline matches all recruiting data within LinkedIn’s profile database, it simplifies the process of monitoring potential hires.

It also adds passive jobseekers to the mix based on their qualifications rather than the need to find employment, which will be useful for companies looking to acquire a specific set of skills.

Stale leads are also transformed into up-to-date records with deeper insights. When new leads are imported, they’re connected to their LinkedIn profile, which members keep updating even when they aren’t looking for a job.

According to LinkedIn chief executive Jeff Weiner, the new feature will enable recruiters to search for more talent from more sources.

“Our focus [is] to connect talent with opportunity on a massive scale by providing a single place to manage and update these leads, wherever they are found,” Weiner said in a statement.

Matthew Tukaki, chief executive of The Sustain Group, says start-ups often struggle to complete the recruitment process properly due to a limited amount of time and money.

“A lot of small businesses, particularly when they start up, are doing so on the smell of an oily rag… so they do things by themselves as much as possible,” he says.

“It stands to reason they’ll do the recruitment process themselves as well, which can mean they’re concentrating more on hiring someone than building their business.”

Even so, Tukaki encourages start-ups to do background research on potential candidates, suggesting the new LinkedIn tool could come in handy.

“[Talent Pipeline will enable recruiters to more efficiently] find out a little bit about the person or the organisation/s they worked for,” he says.

According to LinkedIn, Talent Pipeline will be available in the first half of 2012, although the company has yet to release information about the cost of the service.

Earlier this year, LinkedIn developed a tool allowing jobseekers to post their LinkedIn profiles as resumes on prospective employers’ job sites.

The tool, titled Apply with LinkedIn, was introduced as part of the company’s push to derive revenue from the employee and recruitment sector.