LinkedIn Recruiter Alternatives for Small Teams: How to Choose Without Guessing
If you hire in bursts, a per-seat licence is the wrong shape. Here is how to work out what you actually need, and how to test a replacement in an afternoon.
Lars Andersson has spent more than fifteen years running recruitment and search projects, including work for Microsoft, Samsung and IBM. He still practises rather than only advises, which is where the material on this blog comes from — the models and methods here are the ones he uses on live searches.
His focus is the part of recruiting that resists automation: turning a hiring brief into criteria that can actually be assessed, and separating the requirements that decide a hire from the preferences that merely narrow the pool. Much of what he writes about started as an argument with a hiring manager about which of those a particular line in the brief really was.
He writes for Hiris on sourcing method and economics. Everything published here states its assumptions explicitly, so the figures can be re-run on your own numbers rather than taken on trust.
8 articles
The Unit Economics of Outbound Recruiting: A Model You Can Actually Run
Most outbound cost models stop at tool spend, which is usually the smallest term in the equation. Here is the full model, with the sensitivity analysis that shows where the leverage actually sits.
How to Build a Candidate Shortlist From Criteria When You Are the Whole Sourcing Team
The brief says "senior, fintech, has scaled a team". Filters handle none of that. Here is the process that turns a brief into a list you would actually contact.
Precision and Recall in Candidate Shortlists: Measuring the Candidates You Never Saw
Every shortlist makes two kinds of mistake. One is visible and annoying; the other is invisible and expensive. Here is how to measure both — including the one you cannot see.
Boolean Search for Recruiters: What It Does Well, and the Five Things It Cannot Express
Boolean is excellent for narrowing on facts and useless for judgement. Here are strings worth stealing, and the point at which you should stop adding operators.
Sourcing Passive Candidates on LinkedIn: A Framework That Survives Contact With Reality
Most advice on passive sourcing is a list of search operators and a message template. This is the part that actually determines outcomes: how to read openness, and why specificity beats personalisation.
What Candidate Sourcing Actually Costs a Small Team
The subscription is never the expensive part. Here is how to work out what a hire actually costs you in hours, and when paying someone else is the cheaper option.
Headhunting for Niche Roles: Finding People Who Do Not Show Up in Search
Most "impossible" roles are not short of people — the people just describe themselves differently. Five ways to find them, and how outreach changes when the pool is genuinely small.