Skills

LinkedIn Skills was in Beta at the time of this book’s writing. The tool is intended to offer a way for LinkedIn members to search for the types of skills that are important to them and find other members who have identified those skills in their own LinkedIn profiles, companies tied to those skills, jobs related to those skills, and even more related skills.

When you’re looking for talent to hire for a job opening, Skills is a handy tool that can help you write your job description. Click on the More link in the top navigation bar when you’re logged in to your LinkedIn account and click the Skills link from the drop-down menu. The Skills & Expertise page shown in Figure 15.4 opens where you can type in keywords for the skill you’re looking for. As you type, a list of related keyword skills appears which you can choose from. Search for the types of skills you think the best candidate should have for your open position.

Figure 15.4: The Skills & Expertise page. Enter keywords related to the skill you want to investigate.

Once you’ve selected the skill, click the Search button. Poke around the results that are presented to you.

Review profiles of people with those skills, read through the list of related skills, and check out some of the matching jobs and companies. You’ll find more skills, different ways to word your job description, keywords, and much more information that can help you create the best job description to attract the best talent.

Bottom line: There are many premium accounts you can pay for to execute a full-scale recruitment initiative. However, there are also many ways that you can effectively post a job, find applicants, and attract top talent without paying a huge amount of money. If the types of people who you want to hire use LinkedIn, then it’s worth it to try posting a job through LinkedIn Jobs.

The Least You Need to Know

• Anyone with a LinkedIn account can post a job on the site.

• The price to post a job on LinkedIn depends on the region selected for targeting during the job post creation process.

• You can pay for job postings by purchasing job credits using an accepted credit card.

• LinkedIn offers premium accounts for individuals and small businesses as well as corporate accounts for larger companies and recruiting agencies with varying price levels and features.