Search for candidates and volunteers.
Find great matches for your hard-to-fill roles with step-by-step guidance on defining your needs and optimizing your candidate search.
1. Adopt a skills-based approach ↓
2. Define what you’re looking for ↓
3. Find and refine a list of potential candidates ↓
4. Write your job post around your ideal candidate ↓
5. Search for members who are “Open to Volunteer” ↓
6. Message strong candidates directly ↓
7. Make your talent search part of your employer branding strategy ↓
8. Measure and optimize your job posting performance over time ↓
9. Boost your search with LinkedIn Recruiter ↓
Adopt a skills-first approach to looking for candidates and volunteers.
Adopting a skills-first approach to hiring and finding volunteers can help expand your talent pool by nearly 10x on average. It is also the most direct way to hire for what you need, rather than what a role prototypically requires.
Start by considering which skills your team needs most. Look for skill gaps that could be filled by an employee in the position you’re hiring for. Consider how versatile skills among potential new volunteers could help serve multiple needs at once.
If you’re ready to take your skills-based hiring to the next level, LinkedIn Recruiter or Recruiter Lite allows you to filter candidate searches for skills directly.
Get a clear picture of what skills and experience you’re looking for.
After you’ve developed your list of desired skills, ask internal stakeholders to do the same. Schedule a meeting with each of these stakeholders where you will compare notes to understand your organization’s needs and begin building an ideal candidate profile for the role you’re trying to fill.
Creating an ideal candidate profile helps you define the skills and experience that are valuable to the role. From here, you can build a list of keywords that are likely to appear on the LinkedIn profile of a high-potential candidate.
You can adopt this approach when searching for volunteers with specific skill sets as well.
Search on LinkedIn to find and refine a list of potential candidates and volunteers.
Follow these steps to get started with your search:
Step 1
Make sure you’re logged into LinkedIn. Then, start by typing one or more of your keywords into the LinkedIn search bar. To get more specific with your search, build simple Boolean strings using AND, OR, NOT, quotation marks, and parenthesis (ex: “Director of Donor Relations” OR “Director of Stewardship” AND database management).
Learn more about Boolean searches on LinkedIn.
Step 2
After you’ve entered your keyword(s) select “People” from the list at the top of the page to surface a list of profiles that match your search.
Step 3
Click on “All filters” to narrow your search based on factors like:
• Location
• Current or past employer
• School
• Industry
• Profile language
• Service category
Step 4
Explore your results and review the profiles with the most potential. Save time by using the Control/Command F function on your laptop to quickly hone in on a keyword on a candidate’s profile.
Step 5
If your search results in a limited number of candidates, flag this to your hiring manager or other stakeholders and suggest adjusting your keywords and ideal candidate profile. Consider opening up your search by changing or removing some keywords and filters.
Write your job post around your ideal candidate or volunteer.
After you’ve identified strong candidates or volunteers, consider revising your job post to match up with their experience and background. This is a perfect opportunity to highlight aspects of the open position or benefits associated with working or volunteering for your nonprofit that you think would resonate with your prospective pool of candidates.
For example, if your list of promising candidates all share on their LinkedIn profiles that they value a culture of learning, be sure to include any professional development opportunities available for employees in the position’s revised job description.
Consider members who are “Open to Volunteer.”
If your nonprofit is specifically searching for volunteers with the skills and desire to help your cause, you can look for members who have identified on LinkedIn as “Open to Volunteer,” indicating their interest in such opportunities.
When members select this option, their status will be displayed near the top of their profile and you can learn about what they’re looking for: types of causes to support, skills they can offer, desired locations, and more.
Crucially, LinkedIn helps surface relevant volunteer opportunities for members based on their stated preferences, so if you’re adding as much detail as possible to your nonprofit’s postings, you’ll have a better chance of getting discovered by great candidates!
75% of surveyed members on LinkedIn express interest in volunteering.
Message candidates and potential volunteers directly.
When you find a candidate or potential volunteer who fits what you’re looking for, there are a few ways you can reach out to them on LinkedIn.
With your LinkedIn profile. If you have a Basic (free) LinkedIn account, and are not connected with the candidate already, you can send them a connection request sharing about the opportunity. Connection requests can include a note of up to 200 characters. Once the candidate accepts your request, you can send them unlimited messages. LinkedIn Premium users have additional options to reach members they are not connected with via InMail, or direct messages on LinkedIn.
With LinkedIn Recruiter. This paid tool gives you the ability to send InMails to candidates, even if you’re not connected with them. Make sure to utilize a catchy subject line and personalize your InMail notes to stand out from other notes the candidates might receive.
For more help sending these messages, including templates you can use to get started, check out the Resource hub’s full page on building your talent pipeline.
Make your talent search part of your employer branding strategy.
After you post a job or volunteer position, share the post from your nonprofit’s Page, along with an informal and enticing summary of why someone might be interested in it.
After you create this post, encourage your employees to share it with their networks to spread awareness.
While you don’t need to post about your job and volunteer openings constantly, you can make them an important part of your employer brand.
Measure and optimize your job posting performance over time.
Pay close attention to how effectively both your job postings and promotional content perform. Important metrics to track include:
Job posts
• Views
• Started applications
• Completed applications
• Qualified candidates
• Shares
Promotional content
• Views
• Interactions (likes, shares, comments)
• Click throughs
Keeping a close eye on these metrics will help you understand what your audience is and is not interested in.
Boost your search efforts with LinkedIn Recruiter.
With LinkedIn Recruiter, you’ll have access to additional features that make searching for the right candidates even more efficient.
Advanced search filters
Use filters like: Years of experience, Function, Seniority level, Company size, and When a member joined.
Open to work
View candidates who’ve indicated that they’re open to exploring new roles.
InMails
Reach out to any candidate with a monthly allocation of InMails (direct messages on LinkedIn).
Hiring team collaboration
Share feedback easily with hiring managers, collaborate with teammates, and manage candidates.
Looking for something else?
Discover everything the Resource Hub has to offer and find exactly what you’re looking for.