LinkedIn! Usually dubbed a Facebook for Grownups has been actually growing into a fantastic tools for Corporate Recruiters.

Recruitment Agencies have also attracted high calibre candidates from using the Social Media site and recruiters who have been consistently hiring via LinkedIn, tend to fill a lot of their jobs faster or get referals from connections.

Last week, Microsoft announced that they saved £60,000 of recruitment costs from using LinkedIn.

According to ComputerWeekly:

LinkedIn’s business value was highlighted when Microsoft asked a member of its IT recruitment staff to put together a team to reverse-engineer viruses.

Microsoft saved an estimated £60,000 and was able to source candidates with specialist IT skills from across Europe.

Declan Fitzgerald, IT recruiter at Microsoft, said he had to find nine techies with skills in the rare Assembly and X86 software languages.

He said through normal methods such as advertising and recruitment firms he would have struggled to find people with these niche skills. But through LinkedIn searches he filled seven out of nine positions.

Actually, the £60,000 saved was in direct recruitment company fees. At the moment, LinkedIn gets one million new members every 17 days and has 10 million members in Europe.

Other major recruitment cost savings mentioned are that of Indian IT supplier HCL which has saved £300,000 in recruitment fees in a year, and brewer SAB Miller saved £1.2m in a year in recruitment fees by employing 120 people directly from LinkedIn.

While this trend is quite common within the IT recruitment industry, it will be interesting to get some real time statistics of cost savings from other major recruitment industry sectors.

From my recruitment experience, I have found and placed great candidates from using LinkedIn in diverse sectors and welcome recruiters and professionals to connect with me on LinkedIn.