A new strand on LinkedIn is offering users a chance to enhance their prospects when it comes to online recruitment.
The social and professional networking site has launched a new service, entitled ‘Skills’, which allows the users to list their specific professional skills on their profile in a section that is optimised for easy scanning by eagle-eyed recruiters.
Declan Fitzgerald, the international recruitment manager for the site – which is itself in the middle of an online recruitment process for 100 new staff – said, “This information is important data for any profile as it gets indexed in LinkedIn’s ecosystem and may register on one of their ‘skills pages’ which could be an easier way for jobseekers to be noticed by proactive recruiters.”
He said it demonstrated another way in which candidates’ online identities are shifting to the forefront of the recruitment process, and explained that it would provide greater – but more succinct – detail on people applying for jobs.
“[Recruiters] now spend huge amounts of time searching for online identities,” Fitzgerald explained. “These teams are continually becoming more skilled in how to interact with candidates in LinkedIn groups and Twitter feeds, as well interacting with candidates using blogs.”
Geoff Newman, chief executive of flat fee recruitment agency Recruitment Genius believes this was an inevitable step to help deliver more effective results for recruiters.
“LinkedIn is a brilliant candidate database masquerading as a professional and advertising network. It’s biggest weakness is they don’t have structured CVs per see but generic job titles. Hence collecting information such as skills will ensure recruiters can find candidates easier. Updating your profile with skills has one primary purpose, to help people find you to offer you a new job.”
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