Why Career Networks Make Sense
"What exactly are career networks? And why does it make sense to have a presence on these platforms?"
Career networks are growing in popularity and, above all, in importance. As the name suggests, their primary purpose is "networking." They resemble social networks, because at the business level, too, it is essential to connect with other people, interact with them, and share content with one another. The professional context, however, remains front and center. Many career networks also let you get involved in groups on a wide range of topics. There, you can share your own knowledge, exchange arguments, and discover new perspectives on a subject. Like, comment on, and share content to keep expanding your network and connect with people from a variety of industries.
From an applicant's perspective, they offer an additional opportunity in the job search. By creating a kind of digital business card, candidates give recruiters a clear, at-a-glance overview of their career to date. They can also add noteworthy qualifications as well as their professional strengths and interests, rounded off with an appealing profile photo. This allows them to position themselves favorably alongside the standard application process.
Career networks also offer companies several opportunities to tap into a wide range of value-creation potential. Building and maintaining a compelling company profile takes time, but in the long run it can help you establish yourself as an attractive employer on these networks (employer branding) and dramatically increase your reach. The key is knowing how to make your company's presence both attractive and authentic, in part to enable efficient active sourcing.
How Should I Design My Company's Presence?
To achieve successful, cross-functional results with career networks, business owners should start by asking themselves a few concrete questions:
"What goals do I want to achieve with my company's presence in this community? And, above all, how will I reach those goals?"
Employer Branding
A basic prerequisite is an appealing company profile: in a word, employer branding! Your company profile lets you showcase your products, services, clients, career opportunities, and more. This gives visitors a first impression of your organization. Naturally, you should present your company as attractively as possible to turn interested prospects into applicants. To do so, it is especially important to know your target audience's interests and provide the information that is relevant to them. For example, offer insights into everyday life at your company and introduce your team. Short employee interviews are another option. In any case, show your profile visitors how your company culture is lived day to day. Short videos are ideal for this. Whatever communication tools you use, staying authentic is essential.
Active Sourcing
Closely tied to employer branding , is the concept of active sourcing methods. In short, active sourcing is about efficient talent acquisition, ideally emerging as one of the positive results of actively building your company's profile. Applicants find open positions either through the integrated job search function or directly via company profiles.
To use active sourcing on career networks as effectively as possible, you should familiarize yourself with the relevant methods. To keep this blog post from getting out of hand, we will highlight only a few selected active sourcing methods that we consider the most suitable and beneficial.
The most effective active sourcing method is known as talent mining. As the term suggests, it is explicitly about the targeted search for qualified talent. By combining various proactive recruiting methods, you adapt and steer the networks' search functions in the broadest sense. It is generally wise to choose your search terms as effectively as possible to narrow down the number of talent contacts returned. This gets you to the actual goal of active sourcing faster: sustainable talent acquisition.
Talent mining makes sense on career networks because, with well-chosen keywords, they allow you to find and identify talent with a high degree of precision. For example, if you are specifically looking for an "HR Assistant," you simply enter that term in the search field. You will certainly find results. What matters is knowing your own expectations of the potential applicant. The advanced search lets you apply additional filters and thereby expand your reach accordingly.
Probably the best complement to talent mining is talent networking. As mentioned above, the fundamental goal of talent mining is to advance the research of potential applicants. Talent networking goes a step further, building a systematic network that can be actively used, especially when staffing needs arise at short notice, to reduce time-consuming talent research.
Finally, it helps to know that truly efficient active sourcing requires plenty of practice and a strategic approach. The more systematically you proceed, the higher the quality of your search results and, as a result, of your candidate selection. So-called "pro active sourcers" use a selective combination of different active sourcing methods to build their own workflow, which allows them to leverage the right functions on each platform.
Client Acquisition
Much like talent mining, you can use career networks to acquire clients. First, however, make sure you prioritize the quality of your acquisition over the number of contacts. The leading career networks let you as a company use filters to tailor your search to your specific client requirements. This means you can, for example, target your search by industry or location. Industry-specific acquisition in particular lets you align your search for new clients with your range of services or products, making it both efficient and precise.
Increasing Reach & Measuring Your Activities
It is also crucial for companies to regularly invest time in maintaining and expanding their company profile: by actively participating in the career platform, for example by commenting on, sharing, and liking posts, joining group discussions, and publishing your own posts, you also increase your reach within the network. As a result, more people will notice your company profile because you maintain an active and consistent presence.
Most career networks offer company profiles another opportunity (sometimes at additional cost): you can track and analyze activity on your company page. The advantage is that all of your efforts become measurable. This lets you quickly identify drops in performance. Find out why a post resonated with the community or why it didn't, and take appropriate action to further improve or restore performance. You can also get to know your community better, since you can see who follows your company and who is generally active on your page.
Two Market Leaders
The two best-known career networks are XING and LinkedIn, though they differ slightly:
XING currently has 15 million active members, focuses on the German-speaking region (DACH = Germany, Austria, and Switzerland), and is the market leader there.
On the other hand, there is LinkedIn. This platform is internationally oriented and offers more features and options than XING. With 610 million. members, it is considerably larger than its German competitor. LinkedIn is particularly well suited for experts and, above all, executives, as they are more strongly represented there.
Which network is the better fit depends on your own goals and expectations for the platform. If you are mainly looking for German-speaking contacts and job offers within Germany, you should focus on XING. If you place more value on international exchange or an international career and a broad range of features, LinkedIn is the recommended choice. That said, there is nothing wrong with signing up for both career networks. On the contrary, it gives you the chance to connect with many people and be found by more of them.
Conclusion
Career networks offer potential candidates and companies an interesting platform for connecting and exchanging ideas at a professional level. From a company perspective, you can use these networks purposefully to improve your employer branding and active sourcing processes, as well as to drive systematic client acquisition. Which career network you ultimately use for your company's success depends on your requirements and the goals you have set.
With XING, LinkedIn, BranchOut, and others, you have a wide selection of career platforms to choose from. All in all, using career networks can unlock diverse and targeted value-creation potential for your company.