David Cohen

Half of all CEOs worldwide intend to increase their headcount over the next year. Yet most recruiters are grappling with talent shortages due to the widening skills gap. So it’s not so much an issue of job creation, but a failure of skills to keep pace – a trend that we only see increasing. The cart is pulling the horse.

“We have quintupled the size of the candidate pool from which employers can hire,” claims David Cohen, a senior director of sales at LinkedIn, which estimates 79 per cent of its 259m members around the world are passive candidates.

Bright and ambitious graduates are one of the best investments any business can make. As the class of 2013 prepares to graduate, it's time to ask whether your organisation is ready to attract top new talent.

An inspiring employer brand will deliver real results for companies big and small, driving down cost per hire and employee turnover. Here are five steps on how you could improve it.

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Google and the BBC have topped a list of the most attractive companies to work for in the UK, based on the behaviour of online business networkers.

LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, has for the first time ranked UK companies according to its 175m members’ interest in them – based on clicks through to the companies’ profile pages and interaction with their employees – as well as visits to specific careers and job pages.

“This is… Show more

[Refer to link for full text]

Google and the BBC have topped a list of the most attractive companies to work for in the UK, based on the behaviour of online business networkers.

LinkedIn, the professional social networking site, has for the first time ranked UK companies according to its 175m members’ interest in them – based on clicks through to the companies’ profile pages and interaction with their employees – as well as visits to specific careers and job pages.

“This is the first time that we’ve found a unique way of measuring a talent brand on any fairly consistent metric,” said David Cohen, director of Talent Solutions in Europe at LinkedIn.

He said companies in the UK were investing more in developing relationships with the available ‘talent pool’, including making use of social media, amid increasing competition to lure high-quality staff.

“The competition for talent is extremely high so companies have to adapt more and get smarter in order to figure out how to build talent networks,” he said.

Of 334 recruiters surveyed for LinkedIn’s UK recruitment trends report, 57 per cent said they were spending more on their “employer brand” in 2012 compared with last year, in a bid to enhance perceptions among potential employees. Nine of out of 10 companies said these perceptions had a significant impact on their ability to hire good talent.

“Employer brand used to be what the company told you it was – now it’s what employees are saying,” said Leela Srinivasan, from LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions team.

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