LinkedIn Not Working? Turn It Into a Recruiting Pipeline

Most recruiters think LinkedIn sucks. They just have never stuck with a game plan long enough to win on LinkedIn. They send a connection request, pitch in the very next message, and get ignored. We send the connection request, and the average recruiter immediately throws the right hook or the ask over here. But you’ll notice there’s a big gap in between, and it’s called relationship capital. They have zero relationship capital.

And I have found LinkedIn to be a powerful tool for a recruiter when they use it right. Here’s the LinkedIn recruiting game plan I use, built for relationships, with no ask until you’ve earned one. It is not a right hook platform. LinkedIn works best as a relationship building platform.

1. Make your profile worth accepting

A lot of people forget that when you have a first conversation with a recruit, they Google you. Because LinkedIn has the best SEO, I always treat LinkedIn as though I’m going to Google you immediately. Start with the three things a producer sees when your request shows up. This is not your title line. This is your headline. When you send your connection request, what shows up is your profile picture, your name and your headline. If I’m a loan officer and you say mortgage recruiter, I am not accepting your connection request. Your photo doesn’t need a studio either. If I take my iPhone right now, turn the camera around, go to portrait, I got good lighting behind me, I could totally take that photo and post it as my profile picture. I wouldn’t complicate it, make it super easy. LinkedIn data says if you have any more than three experiences, people are less likely to engage with you. Three is like the right number to maximize engagement.

2. Write a four-part About Me

The goal in social, which is what LinkedIn is, a social platform, the goal in social is to humanize ourselves, not to have a bio. I teach a four-part About Me, written in first person. Number one, who is he outside of work? Number two, who is he now inside of work? Number three, what are his top values? Number four, open invitation to connect with his contact information. Lead with who you are personally first because your about me only shows the first three lines before someone has to click the more button.

3. Stay visible with Social ID

In the digital world, what I found is that visibility always precedes relevancy. LinkedIn controls your newsfeed. Just because you connect to me does not mean you see my content. Posting doesn’t mean becoming an influencer or inventing deep thoughts every morning. ID stands for simply identify what you’re doing as a leader and document it. If you’re a recruiting leader you’re leading sales meetings, recognition events, off-site meetings, why wouldn’t you share those? Best content is content curated, not content created.

4. Find the right producers with Sales Navigator

There’s 92 different titles for loan officers in this industry. I didn’t make that number up, we did a study on it. A single search for loan officer misses a big part of your market, so build your search around the title variations. Sales Navigator lets you target people that are active, not just people that are looking to make a move, which not everybody puts on LinkedIn that they’re looking to make a move. And so one of the cool things about this is from a geographical standpoint, like I can search by zip code and I can search within a mile radius. Before you send a single request, use AI to learn something real about each person. So I could come into my AI and could just say, do some research on him, looking for his cell phone, his Facebook, his LinkedIn, his Instagram if he has one, as well as an email address, along with three important bullet points that would allow me to affirm him when reaching out. If I’m gonna say I did a bunch of research on you and I see some similarities between your core values and my core values, that better be true, because they will challenge you in that space.

5. Connect, thank, give value, then ask

I always start with hi and then their name and that you’d like to connect on LinkedIn. The more information that you include in here, the more likely you’re going to look like you’re going to spam somebody or outright try to recruit them. Once they accept, the next message is short. Thanks for connecting with me on LinkedIn. I look forward to engaging with you on this platform. That’s all you need to say. Connection request Monday, thank you for connecting Tuesday. And then items of value on Wednesday, Thursday, or Friday. Gary V wrote a book called Jab, Jab, Jab, Right Hook. Value, value, value, then you ask. Make sure before you ever have that conversation, you’ve brought value three times.

What it looks like when it works

What we found is that around that four to five month window, where someone’s doing this consistently on a daily basis, the momentum builds. For me, that momentum turned into a steady stream of producers reaching out first. I seriously get about three to five meetings every week off of LinkedIn, organic, unsolicited, never asked, okay? I don’t ever ask for anything on LinkedIn. I bring value on LinkedIn.