When comparing the Betts proprietary hiring platform, Connect, with LinkedIn to decide on your top choice, you need to carefully consider the differences. LI is a broad solution that plays a numbers game by leveraging its social network features. Betts Connect is more focused on sales, marketing and customers success professionals, and positioning you for scalable talent acquisition over casting a wide net.
There are many factors you should look at to decide which is the best fit for what you need, from the candidate audience and support package included to the software features and especially the cost of use. Each of these will contribute to your ability to scale with either recruit-tech system and ultimately the ROI you get on usage.
Let’s take a deeper dive into the differences between Betts Connect and LinkedIn:
What is a Hiring Platform?
A hiring platform or recruitment platform, talent acquisition platform, recruiting software, etc. is in the broadest sense any solution that helps you source candidates. However, definitions can get confusing between contradicting terminology thrown around, keyword targeting on Google searches and many providers mixing features in their systems. Here are some of the similar terms thrown around for recruit-tech:
- Recruiting Management System (RMS)
- Applicant Tracking System (ATS)
- Job Board
- Human Resource Information System (HRIS)
It is important to note that many of these terms are applied incorrectly when searching for hiring platforms specifically. There are job boards like LinkedIn that have recruiting software features, but that is not their primary function – the same goes for ATS software like Greenhouse or Workable. Betts Connect is a true candidate sourcing solution that gives you end-to-end recruiting features and support.
Network
There is one important question you should ask of any recruit-tech solution – will it help you find exactly the right kind of candidates you need? LinkedIn being built from a social networking foundation gives it a leg up on other job boards, but less so as a hiring platform. You can look through millions upon millions of profiles of various professionals, but the filtering algorithms leave much to be desired when you are attempting to track down active job seekers with more specific qualifications.
Betts Connect comes with the largest network of go-to-market (GTM) professionals in the technology industry, giving you access to hundreds of thousands of pre-vetted candidates to choose from. You are able to view factors like work history and education through candidate profiles just as in LinkedIn, but Connect delivers additional data not included in LI on top of tracking a candidate’s job seeking status, ensuring that you know who is off the market or actively seeking new employment. Betts recruiters remain connected to candidates as your point of contact and are able to capture the information that cannot be gleaned through a profile alone.
Features
Technology matters when you are choosing between solutions, and your hiring platform should be able to make your life easier when you are sourcing candidates for open roles. LinkedIn offers predominantly basic-level talent acquisition features, which can be good or bad for you depending greatly on how deep you need to go into your recruiting search. They do offer some more advanced functionality in places, but virtually all of these are behind various paywalls and added subscriptions.
Betts Connect is a modern solution with a modern user interface (UI) and offers all of the latest performance capabilities that a hiring platform can bring. The sourcing algorithms are more advanced, the search recruiting tools are better automated, and the engagement workflows are more streamlined than those in a job board system. Users can also take advantage of AI tools to parse through candidates even faster by filtering through the qualifications you need for more strategic hiring.
Support
The SaaS (Software as a Service) sector has created a new benchmark for support in the software market, with account managers or customer success managers (CSM) often assigned to directly guide and assist users in maximizing their ROI. However, for a platform as big as LinkedIn, you are going to be dealing solely with helpdesk personnel unless you opt to pay extra to work with a consultant.
Betts Connect features end-to-end support delivered through each account CSM, who will act as your guide to getting the most usage out of your hiring software. Users that leverage our Recruitment as a Service (RaaS) model will also receive direct support from an assigned Betts recruiter that comes with your Connect seat automatically. These resources will support your talent acquisition and allow you to scale your operations without having to bring on more internal recruiters or an RPO firm.
Cost
Cost is the “make or break” point for any technology investment, but too often the price tag total is obfuscated by all of the variables involved. LinkedIn is optimal for many because it is free to use upfront, but where it fails many businesses is in adding fees to get any real use out of it. You could post a job at no cost initially, but to find more candidates, send messages, get analytical insights, obtain recruiter support, or anything else LI offers you will need to choose from between different paid subscriptions – the enterprise-level plan usually starts out at over $10,000 and that is before you engage outsourced help or hire internal recruiters.
For the cost of one steady subscription with Betts Connect, you get access to all of these features and more upfront, keeping your Cost-Per-Hire level, visible, controllable and scalable. You can source and hire candidates any time and at any volume, and with RaaS you can leverage recruiter support to scale your talent acquisition without having to blow up your hiring budget.
Scalability
An underlying factor within all of the points above is the importance of ensuring scalability in your recruiting process. Whichever solutions you invest in need to be able to handle all of your hiring demands at all stages, or you will run into roadblocks that are going to stretch out your Cost-Per-Hire and time-to-hire. Using LinkedIn as your hiring platform is not a scalable solution – costs will rack up, idiosyncrasies will slow down recruitment and onboarding, and you are still on your own for everything LinkedIn does not do (and for everything it does not do well).
Betts has worked with over 10,000 venture capital-funded startups in the technology sector, as well as many private equity-backed firms, all for whom growth is a key objective. We have built Connect drawing from our deep expertise in this space and its needs, with scalability at the forefront. It does not matter if you need to hire for one role today and 100 tomorrow – Betts Connect is designed to position your talent acquisition for success in all scenarios.
See Betts Connect in Action
When searching for sales, marketing or customer success candidates with experience in tech to recruit to your team, Betts Connect is unequivocally a more scalable and more affordable option than LinkedIn. Reach out to our team today and get a chance to see for yourself what Connect can do.Contact Betts Recruiting today to learn more about Connect and see this hiring platform and all of its features in action.