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If you’re an active LinkedIn user – a recruiter or an active candidate, you’ve probably seen the green tag with “Actively recruiting” next to it.
And your guess is right!
This green tag helps hiring companies attract job seekers to their profiles.
With over 1 billion members and 59 million companies, LinkedIn is the largest professional network in the world.
Beyond networking, LinkedIn helps recruiters, hiring managers, and small business owners find the right candidates.
It’s also where 61 million jobseekers turn to find the best company to work for.
Okay, but how to get the “Actively Recruiting” tag on your job posts?
How can you employ LinkedIn’s various features to boost your recruitment process and find people open to work?
I’ve prepared for you a great guide that will help you boost your recruiting strategy.
Here is what I’ll cover in this article:
- What does Actively Recruiting on LinkedIn mean?
- 4 strategies for effective recruitment on LinkedIn
- LinkedIn Recruiter VS Sales Navigator
- 3 LinkedIn InMail templates for recruiters
Without further ado, let’s get into it!
What Does Actively Recruiting On LinkedIn Mean?
Firstly, let’s break down what actively recruiting really means.
LinkedIn’s actively recruiting tag is a dynamic feature that simplifies your hiring process.
This green tag, visible alongside your job postings, signals to job seekers that you’re hiring new people.
How The Actively Recruiting Tag Enhances Recruitment Efforts
There are two types of recruiting: active and passive.
Active recruiting is when you’re not just passively waiting for applications but are actively reaching out to potential candidates, significantly increasing your chances of finding the right fit.
On the other hand, passive recruiting means your Recruitment Team is open to receiving applications and may consider candidates. However, this approach doesn’t involve any direct headhunting.
For hiring managers and recruiters, the “actively recruiting” tag is a great way to stand out and encourage more candidates to apply.
It also presents you as a responsive employer, reinforcing your image as a company committed to attracting top talent.
As active recruiting often involves contacting potential candidates directly, I’ll show you how to do it with Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Recruiter.
How To Activate The Actively Recruiting Tag
I’m sorry to inform you there is no button for activating this green tag from your profile.
LinkedIn’s algorithm automatically assesses your recruiting behavior and later assigns you the tag.
Therefore, paying attention to your LinkedIn activity over the past weeks is crucial to qualify for the actively recruiting tag.
Key actions include:
- Posting new job listings
- Searching LinkedIn profiles and initiating contact with potential candidates
- Engaging with candidates via InMail
- Or simply your responsiveness to the applicants
There’s no manual activation required; if you meet the criteria, the tag will naturally appear on your job postings.
If there are any issues with your recruiting status, LinkedIn’s support team is ready to help you resolve them.
4 Strategies For Effective Recruitment On LinkedIn
Understanding the power of LinkedIn for active recruitment is just the beginning.
The real challenge is using that power to find and attract the best candidates for your job openings.
There are 4 strategies and tips for leveling up your recruitment process on LinkedIn:
- Create and share LinkedIn job opportunities
- Enhance visibility with LinkedIn Ads
- Use LinkedIn Private Mode
- Use LinkedIn Recruiter and InMails
1. Create And Share LinkedIn Job Opportunities
Keeping your job postings fresh and clean is one of the best ways to attract ideal candidates.
Your job description must reflect your company’s core values to attract the attention of the best candidates and make your job offer stand out.
This alignment will resonate with your LinkedIn audience and encourage them to apply when you post a job.
It refers to optimizing your job posting’s title, description, all required skills, responsibilities, and other relevant and vital information.
Focus on including relevant keywords and evaluate the requirements and perks they list to identify areas for improvement in your postings.
This strategy can help refine your job postings to make them more attractive and competitive.
2. Enhance Visibility With LinkedIn Ads
To further strengthen your recruitment efforts on LinkedIn, consider utilizing LinkedIn ads.
These paid advertisements enable you to promote your company, job openings, or content to a specific targeted audience on the platform, helping achieve various recruitment objectives.
This includes building your employer brand, generating interest and engagement in your job openings, driving traffic to your career site or job postings, and nurturing relationships within your talent pipeline.
LinkedIn offers the following ad formats:
- Sponsored Content: Raise the profile of your organic posts (like articles, videos, or images) within your target audience’s LinkedIn feed.
This format perfectly highlights your employer’s brand, culture, or values to attract candidates aligned with your mission.
- Sponsored Messaging: Send personalized messages to your target audience through LinkedIn Messenger, initiating conversations, inviting applications, or sharing relevant content.
- Text Ads: Create simple, text-based ads in prime LinkedIn locations, like the right rail or top banner.
Ideal for driving traffic directly to your sites, you pay only for clicks received.
- Dynamic Ads: Craft personalized ads that capture attention by incorporating your target audience’s profile photo, name, or job title.
These ads are personalized based on the viewer’s profile, making them highly effective for targeted advertising.
Encourage them to follow your company, apply for jobs, or join your talent network.
3. Use LinkedIn Private Mode
You may not know it, but LinkedIn can provide privacy features like your profile’s private mode.
Activating the private mode feature on LinkedIn can be an innovative and effective strategy for maintaining anonymity when recruiting.
This is a good hack when you don’t want to alert potential candidates that you’ve viewed their profiles.
So, how do you enable your LinkedIn profile’s private mode?
1. Go to the “Settings & Privacy” section on LinkedIn
2. Then click on “Visibility” on the left side menu
3. Select “Profile Viewing Options”
4. Then switch your visibility to “private mode”
By discreetly recruiting on LinkedIn, you can build a list of potential candidates without signaling your interest prematurely.
This approach strategically identifies and shortlists candidates based on their experience, giving you valuable insight into their professional history.
By reviewing profiles in private mode, you can discreetly assess which candidates are best suited to move to the next stage of the hiring process.
4. Use LinkedIn Recruiter and InMails
To enhance your LinkedIn recruitment strategy, consider leveraging LinkedIn Recruiter and InMail.
These premium tools empower you to identify, contact, and manage candidates more efficiently, giving you a competitive advantage.
- LinkedIn Recruiter grants access to the network’s user base, enabling you to find candidates who fit your criteria perfectly, even if they’re not actively job searching.
Features like the “Open to new opportunities” and “Actively recruiting” spotlights can significantly improve your recruitment efforts.
- InMail, meanwhile, allows for direct communication with any LinkedIn member.
This feature can significantly increase your outreach success, boasting a higher response rate than traditional emails or phone calls.
However, when using InMail, it’s important to stick to the best practices for writing engaging messages.
This is why I’ve added a bonus of 3 InMail templates for recruits that you can personalize to your needs.
We’ll get there soon!
LinkedIn Recruiter Lite VS Sales Navigator
As an active recruiter, you should know there are tools other than LinkedIn for facilitating the process: LinkedIn Sales Navigator or LinkedIn Recruiter.
But you may wonder which one is better for recruiting.
Sales Navigator offers 3 different pricing plans:
- Core (Professional): $99/month
- Advanced (Team): $149/month
- Advanced Plus (Enterprise): starts at $1600/year
LinkedIn Recruiter offers two different plans:
- Recruiter Lite: $170/month
- Recruiter: $835/month
Let’s compare both tools. This way, you’ll decide which works best for your LinkedIn Active Recruiting.
Sales Navigator Core Offers More InMails Than Recruiter Lite
LinkedIn Recruiter Lite comes with 30 InMails per month for one user.
Regardless of the chosen offer, Sales Navigator comes with 50 monthly InMail credits.
You don’t know what are InMails?
They are premium LinkedIn messages that allow you to skip the connection request step and land directly in the candidate’s inbox.
Learn more on this video.
Both Tools Have The Saved Search Feature
Both LinkedIn Recruiter and Sales Navigator offer the possibility to save your searches.
This feature is really powerful. It lets you be notified whenever a new candidate or lead matches your search filters.
On Sales Navigator, simply click on Saved Searches > New Results
Then, you will see the new people matching your search filters.
On LinkedIn Recruiter, the feature works exactly the same way.
You can decide to receive your notifications daily or weekly and LinkedIn will send you updates automatically.
Boolean Search Can Be Used On Both Tools
LinkedIn Boolean search is a simple programmatic language that uses a combination of logical connectors (AND, OR, NOT) and punctuation (parentheses and quotes).
It allows you to run a specific search on the LinkedIn database.
Boolean Searches on LinkedIn Sales Navigator and LinkedIn Recruiter work the same way..
For example, writing “Developer AND Python” in the job title field will search for people whose job titles mention Developer and Python.
Search Filters Are More Powerful On Sales Navigator Core
Sales Navigator has more than 5 filters that Recruiter Lite doesn’t have:
- Year in current company
- Year in current position
- Company Type
- Company Headquarter
- Groups
As a Recruiter, knowing how long someone is in the position may be crucial.
Indeed, someone who has been in a company from 6 months to 1 year is way less likely to leave than someone who has spent more than 3 years in a company.
3 InMail Message Templates For Recruiters
You’re finally here.
Discovering potential candidates is only part of the equation; the next step is capturing their interest.
So, InMails can be your crucial step to skip the usual connection requests and land directly in the inbox of a LinkedIn user, the person you want to hire.
Here are 3 InMail templates for recruiters that you can personalize, inspire, or copy for your LinkedIn InMail strategy:
- InMail to your LinkedIn follower-candidate
- Job Opportunity
- “Open To Work” candidate
Template 1: InMail to Your LinkedIn Follower-Candidate
So, you want to hook some top talent on LinkedIn?
Check out your company page followers. Why?
These people vibe enough with your company that they hit “follow”.
That means they’re probably down to chat about job openings.
You got to make that InMail personal, like you’re passing a note in class that says, “Hey, you’re awesome, and here’s why.”
Here’s how you slide into those DMs as a hiring manager with a call to action:
Subject: [company name] needs a [job title]
Hey [Candidate Name],
Spotted you follow us on LinkedIn.
We’re recruiting for a [Job Title] to strengthen our [Department].
Let me know if you’re interested in this position?
Template 2: Job Opportunity
So, you’ve spotted the perfect fit for that opening in your company, and you want to play your best card —propose the job.
With the job opportunity approach, it’s all about showing you’re all serious about this offer and that it truly corresponds to your requirements.
Subject: job offer – [job title]
Hey [Candidate Name],
We’re looking for a [Job Title], in [Company Name], who will have a key position in our [Department].
From what I see on your profile you seem to be a fit.
Here is the job offer: [link to the offer]
Ping me if this is something you’d be interested in.
You want to show them that you’ve got something they want that screams — it’s meant for you!
Template 3: “Open To Work” Candidate
Most LinkedIn users looking for new job opportunities on LinkedIn have a green tag on their profile picture, saying: “Open to work”.
This is how you distinguish potentially interested candidates and pay more attention to their LinkedIn profiles.
So here is an InMail message template you can send to the LinkedIn user who caught your attention and matches your requirements.
Subject: are you still “open to work”
Hi [Candidate Name],
I see you’re open to new job opportunities.
Your background in [Skillset] is what [your company] is looking for [job title].
The role’s all about [Brief Job Description], and you can find more details here: [link to job offer].
Will this interest you?
Conclusion
I’m sure you’ve discovered some new capabilities of LinkedIn as a recruitment tool and not only.
But you also learned about 2 other tools – Sales Navigator Core and Recruiter Lite, that may elevate your LinkedIn Recruiting process.
Don’t hesitate to incorporate the above-mentioned strategies and use the InMail templates for visible results.
FAQ
What does it mean if LinkedIn says actively recruiting?
LinkedIn’s “Actively Recruiting” tag indicates that the company hires new talents and employees to expand its team.
This green tag benefits both the recruiting company and the job applicants.
Your recruiting team will be able to find the right people quickly instead of having to wait for them to find you.
In addition, understanding LinkedIn’s recruiting activities will help job seekers quickly determine if a position is worth applying for.
What does active talent mean on LinkedIn Recruiter?
The term “Active Talent” on LinkedIn Recruiter refers to candidates more inclined to respond to recruiters, as evidenced by their recent profile activities.
This group includes individuals who have recently updated their profiles, shared their resumes, or are employed at companies experiencing layoffs, making them ideal prospects for new job opportunities.
These people are more likely to actively apply for job offers matching their skills, industry, and expertise.
Is LinkedIn effective for recruiting?
LinkedIn is the second most popular platform for recruiters after Indeed.
It’s a professional networking platform that bridges the gap between professionals, job seekers, and employers, establishing itself as an essential recruitment tool.
LinkedIn offers advanced search capabilities, top-notch communication features, and industry-leading profile tools.
Incorporating LinkedIn into your recruitment strategy allows you to tap into its vast user base, connecting you with exceptional talent and identifying the most qualified candidates for your open positions.
What Are The Benefits Of Actively Recruiting On LinkedIn?
Here are the perks you get when “Actively recruiting” on LinkedIn:
- Quickly find suitable candidates instead of passively waiting for them to find you.
- Get recommendations for profiles that match your ideal candidate criteria.
- Scrape LinkedIn searches and prospects to reach them and save time actively.
- Send LinkedIn InMails to connect personally with candidates during your recruitment.
- Leverage LinkedIn’s advanced search filters to narrow down candidates based on specific skills, experience, education, and more.
Disclosure
This content was partly written by AI (ChatGPT 4), I added my own perspective, fact-checked it and made sure it is helpful for you.
