Through successful HR project management, your business has the chance to set up a more efficient platform for accomplishing essential business tasks that contribute to a company’s functions. Recruitment efforts, for example, stand to improve if they are augmented with relevant data about candidates to improve hire quality. The type of data being assessed and its source is important to consider, however.
A study from the UK-based Norrie Johnson Recruitment looks at the role that the popular networking website LinkedIn plays in influencing recruitment decisions. Site profiles tend to feature a fair amount of information for recruiters to sort through, and the sections that the candidates themselves think are most important aren’t necessarily what HR professionals online are paying attention to, or what they need to.
Out of the 100 “HR senior decision makers” the firm assessed for this study, only 46 percent said they check candidate profiles on LinkedIn, and just 31 percent said they use this service to “headhunt” people.
The source also looked at the specific elements that HR professionals value most highly when reading a senior candidate’s profile: of all the identifiers present, the candidate description appears to be the most valuable, ranked especially highly on a scale of 1 to 10 by HR professionals for companies with between 1000 and 5000 employees. Other important factors for companies of all sizes include the number of recommendations a candidate has, the actual content of the recommendations and the endorsements for skills and expertise.
Whether or not LinkedIn specifically factors into an employer’s recruitment plan, HR consulting companies assist in the work of locating the best available tools for human capital and establish a baseline for better performance. In recruitment, this might include solutions that provide accurate and integrated data about a candidate in a format that is easy to interact with.