Do You Get Higher Quality Active Job Seekers from LinkedIn Group Job Postings than from Posting Jobs on the Major Job Boards?

This is a question I’ve been considering lately as I reassess where I put my energy into my days. 

Of course, name sourcing or lead sourcing or lead generation should be focused PRIMARLY on passive candidates.  And, of course LinkedIn is a great way to do this.  But, in every pot of active candidates (or active job seekers) there are a few pieces of gold.  The trick is to find out how to get to those pieces of gold in the most efficient manner. 

Of course, for years this has been done by painstakingly posting jobs on the major job boards and painstakingly going through the responses in hopes of mining out those little pieces of gold.  Or, in the same respect, creating saved searches that provide matched results daily of people that place their resumes in the giant job board databases.  And, this does eventually pay off.  Yes, I’ve been around long enough to make this a qualified statement!

Yet, with the rise of LinkedIn in the awareness of most professionals, and the subsequent increase of the amount of profiles created on LinkedIn, many active job seekers are now using it as their job board.  Of course, they’re searching the paid job listings in LinkedIn (which we’re not talking about here), but many also realize the importance of the jobs posted within groups.  It may take them time to discover groups, but they eventually do, and with it they discover that many good jobs are posted within them. 

This is not a lesson on job posting on LinkedIn so I’ll get to the chase.  I’d have to say that as of recent the quality of ACTIVE candidates replying to jobs via LinkedIn group postings has appeared to be better than that of those coming from the major job boards.  So, the question becomes…do you get better active candidates from posting this way, and, if so, should you forgo the major job boards and only look at this method?  I don’t have a definitive answer to this.  And, quite frankly, I’m the kind of guy who goes for being comprehensive.  Hence, I’m likely to still use both.  But, food for thought as it’s always wise to reassess where you put your energy into the tough job requisitions of these tough recruiting days.

There are a lot of additional tips I can give in relation to this issue, and can list plenty of other side benefits from such activities.  But, we’ll save this for another time!!!

Good luck!