Content Table
- Introduction: Leveraging LinkedIn Talent Insights
- Understanding Location Data
- Managing Stakeholder Expectations
- Analysing Industry Trends
- Setting Diversity Goals
- Competitive Intelligence
- Talent Pool Analysis
- Optimising Sourcing Strategy
- Ongoing Market Research
- Getting Value from Your Data
- Future Applications
- Conclusion
Leveraging LinkedIn Talent Insights
The data and analytics within LinkedIn Talent Insights enable talent leaders to make strategic, data-driven decisions. By leveraging Insights, teams can optimise location strategy, benchmark against competitors, identify talent gaps, forecast future needs, and adapt in real-time to market shifts. Integrating Insights into workflows and empowering teams to leverage data in sourcing, recruiting, and workforce planning is vital. With the right processes and culture around Insights, talent organisations can gain a strategic advantage in the market and achieve better talent outcomes.
Understanding Location Data
Location is a crucial strategic consideration when making talent decisions. With remote and hybrid work growing, you can now source candidates from a more expansive geography. LinkedIn Insights provides robust location-based data to help optimise your approach.
Here are some ways to leverage location insights:
- Discover hidden talent pools – Search for your key roles globally to find concentrated pockets of talent in unexpected locations. This expands your options beyond prominent big cities.
- Identify transferable skills – Look for adjacent skill sets in other geographic regions. A developer talent pool in Eastern Europe could be transferable to your US-based role.
- Set location priorities – Know where the talent is to focus your sourcing budget where it will be most effective. Avoid wasting time in saturated markets.
- Inform expansion decisions – Use location data to decide where to open new offices and branches based on available talent pools.
- Benchmark competitors – See where peer companies are successfully hiring to uncover new target locations.
- Get stakeholder buy-in – Demonstrate limited local talent to gain approval for remote or alternative locations.
- Assess relocation feasibility – Understand candidate availability in potential office locations to set realistic goals.
- Build location flexibility – Consider remote roles to expand options. Monitor remote talent pools over time.
- Track strategic shifts – Regularly revisit location metrics to adapt to changing geography dynamics as people migrate.
- Supplement with other data – Combine location insights with compensation, demographics and other analytics for a complete picture.
| Location Considerations | Potential Data Sources |
|---|---|
| Available talent | LI Talent Pool report |
| Compensation rates | Salary comparison sites |
| Migration patterns | Government population data |
| Cost of living | Economic and real estate data |
| Language capabilities | Community organisation stats |
| Work eligibility | Immigration and visa regulations |
With the right location intelligence, you can optimise your talent geography to access the broadest possible talent pools aligned with your priorities. The key is to analyse and adapt as the labour market evolves continuously.
Managing Stakeholder Expectations
Getting buy-in from hiring managers and leadership on talent decisions is critical. LinkedIn Insights provides the data and analytics to align stakeholders on realistic talent strategies.
Here are some tips for leveraging Insights to manage expectations:
- Quantify the talent pool – Show numerical talent availability data to demonstrate what is feasible for location, skills, experience level etc.
- Make a case for prioritisation – Illustrate the most acute talent gaps based on current shortages that should be addressed first.
- Set benchmarks early – Involve stakeholders in reviewing Insights reports to co-create targets and agree on critical metrics for talent goals.
- Contextualise external factors– Compare benchmarks over time against competitors to account for industry trends beyond your control.
- Use visualisations – Charts and graphs resonate more than data tables alone—present critical metrics.
- Collaborate on solutions – Brainstorm creative sourcing approaches or alternative locations once data has framed the challenges.
- Show incremental progress – Provide regular Insights updates to showcase improvements on agreed metrics through your efforts.
- Outline future capabilities – Share a longer-term vision for how data-driven hiring will evolve and enable strategic growth.
- Emphasise quality – Make the case that data-backed hiring will result in better candidate fit and reduced turnover.
- Communicate wins – Highlight case studies where data shaped successful, non-traditional hiring that wouldn’t have occurred otherwise.
| Challenge | Possible Data-Driven Solutions |
|---|---|
| Local talent shortage | Expand to remote roles or alternative locations |
| Unrealistic requirements | Lower experience thresholds based on available candidates |
| Biased impressions | Demonstrate demographics that counter false assumptions |
| Lagging diversity | Widen sourcing to access more diverse candidate pools |
The key is to position yourself as the trusted advisor on talent analytics. Then you can guide stakeholders towards realistic, optimised hiring strategies backed by compelling data-driven insights.
Analysing Industry Trends
Understanding your industry’s talent landscape is crucial for strategic workforce planning. LinkedIn Insights provides market intelligence to benchmark your company against broader trends.
Here are some ways to leverage Insights for industry analysis:
- Identify fastest-growing skills – Discover whiMonitore is rapidly rising in your sector to prioritise recruiting and development.
- Assess talent availability – Gauge the depth of talent pools by role to guide your recruiting focus on gaps or abundance.
- Benchmark hiring demand – See which sectors have high competition vs excess supply to expand your candidate search.
- Monitor geographic shifts – Monitor new talent hubs as workers migrate to optimise your location strategy.
- Compare compensation ranges – Use aggregated salary data to ensure your offers remain competitive.
- Size up your competitors – Track growth trajectories and attrition rates to evaluate talent competitiveness.
- Watch migration patterns – See which companies’ top talent is coming from or leaving to focus poaching efforts.
- Identify demographic imbalances – Locate untapped talent pools by revealing diversity gaps in your sector.
- Spot early adoption of tech – Note which skills and roles are emerging to get a jump on pivotal hiring.
- Validate internal perceptions – Confirm or correct assumptions about industry norms with unbiased data.
| Metric | Potential Application |
|---|---|
| Fastest-growing skills | Prioritise key recruiting and development |
| Location concentration | Expand sourcing to emerging talent hubs |
| Salary benchmarking | Optimise compensation strategy |
| Competitor growth trends | Focus poaching outreach on fragile talent pools |
| Demographic imbalances | Develop diversity-sourcing initiatives |
Regularly monitoring Insights metrics provides an external perspective to complement internal workforce analytics. Combining macro and micro intelligence allows optimal alignment of talent strategy with industry dynamics.
Setting Diversity Goals
Expanding diversity requires a data-driven approach. LinkedIn Insights provides workforce demographics to set realistic, meaningful representation goals.
Here are some ways to leverage Insights to improve diversity:
- Evaluate representation – Audit current workforce demographics against industry benchmarks to identify gaps.
- Assess potential talent pools – Research location, skills and roles to reveal viable diverse candidate sources.
- Guide inclusive sourcing – Use insights to expand and target outreach to minority talent hubs.
- Counter-biased assumptions – Let data correct inaccurate perceptions around diverse talent availability.
- Inform expansion plans – Factor diversity stats into decisions on new locations and hiring priorities.
- Calculate realistic ranges – Set data-backed diversity targets aligned with the current labour supply.
- Track incremental progress – Monitor small monthly or quarterly gains using a metrics-driven dashboard.
- Account for external factors – Contextualize results against industry trends beyond your control.
- Report structured insights – Share actionable business intelligence across stakeholders to drive change.
- Update regularly – Re-run frequently to adapt an approach as demographics shift.
| Metric | Potential Application |
|---|---|
| Workforce/industry gender ratios | Set realistic goals for female representation |
| Leadership/pipeline ethnicity data | Identify and address promotion barriers |
| Competitor diversity stats | Benchmark reasonable aspirational targets |
| Location demographics | Expand sourcing to diverse talent hot spots |
With a data-driven diversity strategy, you can set meaningful, incremental goals tailored to current labour supply realities while expanding your longer-term possibilities.
Competitive Intelligence
LinkedIn Insights enables robust competitive benchmarking to inform your talent strategy. Tracking critical metrics for peer companies provides actionable intelligence.
Here are some ways to leverage Insights for competitor analysis:
- Identify top poaching targets – Find companies with high attrition rates or recent layoffs.
- Research wins and losses – See where competitors are gaining and losing talent to focus your efforts.
- Unlock new sourcing pools – Target feeder companies that supply talent to competitors.
- Assess brand reputation – Compare follower counts and engagement as a proxy for employer brand strength.
- Monitor emerging threats – Keep an eye on disruptive startups entering your space.
- Analyse compensation – Check if competitors pay more for critical roles to avoid churn.
- Confirm hiring challenges – Validate if shortages you face are industry-wide.
- Size up leadership – Track executive moves to determine organisational stability.
- Watch for warning signs – Declining followers or job postings could signal internal issues.
- Spot acquisition targets – Identify companies with complementary talent pools to merge.
| Metric | Insights | Actions |
|---|---|---|
| Follower growth | Competitors up 20% | Boost social media recruitment budget |
| Attrition rate | High churn at three competitors | Target similar talent profiles in outreach |
| New job postings | Market-wide 10% ↓ last quarter | Maintain hiring goals through the downturn |
Intelligence on what makes rival companies successful or vulnerable allows you to emulate strengths and capitalise on weaknesses in building your workforce.
Talent Pool Analysis
Understanding the contours of your current and potential talent pools is foundational to recruitment success. LinkedIn Insights provides data to optimise your approach.
Here are some ways to leverage Insights for talent pool analytics:
- Assess skill distribution – Identify the most robust capabilities to showcase and gaps to prioritise.
- Evaluate speciality niches – Discover unique value-added skills possessed by your workforce.
- Project retirement risks – Use age demographics to forecast knowledge drain from upcoming departures.
- Highlight development needs – Compare internal benchmarks to external to reveal urgent upskilling requirements.
- Identify transferable adjacent skills – Determine feasible pivot opportunities to expand the available talent.
- Gauge external competition – Weigh openings against market supply to set realistic hiring targets.
- Review diversity distribution – Locate imbalanced demographic segments within the workforce to address.
- Calculate retention risk – Use tenure data to predict the turnover likelihood for proactive mitigation.
- Segment potential talent – Break down the external pool by speciality, seniority, location etc., to refine sourcing.
- Uncover hidden gems – Look beyond prominent talent hubs to find rich niche skill pools.
| Metric | Insight | Action |
|---|---|---|
| Adjacent skill clusters | Deep QA talent in Krakow | Source QA professionals for software roles |
| Below-average diversity | Female professionals under-represented | Develop an outreach initiative for women |
| High performer turnover | Above-market Development churn | Implement a Development retention plan |
You can optimise sourcing strategy, succession planning, and workforce development with comprehensive intelligence on current and prospective talent.
Example:
Aligning your sourcing approach with supply and demand dynamics is critical for recruitment efficiency. LinkedIn Insights enables data-backed optimisation.
Here are some ways to leverage Insights to optimise sourcing:
- Focus on talent-rich locations – Concentrate on recruiting where supply is abundant for your needs.
- Target passive candidates – Identify talent likely to consider new roles based on tenure and trajectory.
- Balance seniority – Pursue entry, mid, and senior-level prospects based on pipeline gaps.
- Highlight transferable skills – Look for adjacent skill sets to expand possibilities.
- Cross-train recruiters – Align outreach to recruiter knowledge of different specialities.
- Refine targeting – Filter outreach demographically, by speciality, past companies etc.
- Shift geos – Be prepared to expand or refocus geography based on new data.
- Watch competitors – Pursue prospects when competitor layoffs occur.
- Get creative – Consider non-traditional channels like boomerangs, freelancers, and more.
- Iterate quickly – Tweak approach based on response rates, hiring velocity, and cost per hire.
| Metric | Insight | Action |
|---|---|---|
| DevOps supply is up 20% in Warsaw | Viable talent pool | Increase DevOps recruiting efforts |
| Tech Director tenure down | More open to new roles | Target Tech Director outreach |
| Python developers demand up | Scarce talent | Expand to JavaScript developers |
With the right talent supply intelligence, sourcing becomes focused, efficient, and adaptable to market conditions. You spend less time and budget on fruitless outreach.
Ongoing Market Research
The labour market evolves rapidly. Continuous analytics and adjustment are vital to staying ahead of shifts. LinkedIn Insights enables proactive data-driven adaptation.
Here are some tips for ongoing research:
- Build a reporting cadence – Set a regular schedule to re-pull Insights data, whether weekly, monthly etc.
- Create tracking dashboards – Maintain a simple scorecard to monitor fundamental metric changes over time.
- Leverage alerts – Use search alerts for key terms to notify you of essential profile updates.
- Take snapshots – Download complete Insights reports periodically to compare historical patterns.
- Follow influencers – Stay on top of industry thought leaders and observers for real-time perspective.
- Talk to candidates – Regularly debrief new hires on job search patterns and perceptions.
- Watch for early signals – Notice niche job titles emerging that may indicate new roles.
- Mix quantitative and qualitative – Blend challenging Insights data with anecdotal observations for context.
- Share findings widely – Routinely circulate critical report updates across recruiting and leadership.
- Adjust strategies – Have a process to quickly adapt sourcing, targeting and branding based on new intel.
| Metric | Potential Shift | Response |
|---|---|---|
| Web developer openings ↓ | Cooling demand | Reduce hiring target by 10% |
| Wroclaw supply of PMs ↑ | Growing talent cluster | Launch Wroclaw PM recruiting campaign |
| Competitor A openings ↑ | Ramping hiring | Accelerate referrals outreach |
Making market research systematic allows you to track changes, react dynamically, and maximise the value of LinkedIn Insights.
Getting Value from Your Data
The key to maximising LinkedIn Insights is systematically translating the data into concrete sourcing and recruiting actions.
Here are some best practices to drive value:
- Set specific, measurable goals – Establish numeric hiring targets based on your findings. Track progress.
- Implement location-based strategies – Optimise geo-targeting of outreach based on identified talent concentrations.
- Launch skills-based initiatives – Train recruiters on pivoting to secondary skills when primary targets are scarce.
- Track outcomes – Monitor applicant quality, time-to-fill, and hiring metrics before and after changes.
- Benchmark against past performance – Compare metrics to your pre-Insights baselines to quantify the impact.
- Course correct quickly – Be prepared to adapt strategies if initial moves don’t produce results rapidly.
- Build proficiency over time – Take on simple use cases first. Leverage LinkedIn resources to expand expertise.
- Get stakeholder buy-in – Keep leaders updated on how data drives decisions through regular reviews.
- Integrate Insights into workflows – Incorporate data touchpoints into your standard recruiting processes.
- Promote a data-driven culture – Encourage team members to view talent challenges through analytics.
| Objective | Action | Metrics |
|---|---|---|
| Improve talent geography | Source from emerging region hub | % applicants from the target region |
| Increase developer hiring | Pivot to adjacent skills | Developer hiring velocity |
| Cut time-to-fill | Prioritise passive outreach | Average time-to-fill |
The more Insights can inform your recruiting, the more you can optimise programs, processes, and culture for results. Leading with data pays dividends.
Future Applications
The use cases for LinkedIn Insights are constantly expanding as companies embed analytics into their talent programs. Some emerging ways to leverage Insights include:
- Long-term workforce planning – Use hiring demand forecasts, attrition predictions, and growth projections for future needs analysis.
- Proactive retention – Identify flight risks based on tenure patterns and preemptively intervene.
- Succession planning – Map high-potential internal talent against expected role availability.
- Compensation benchmarking – Keep pay competitive using aggregated salary data for specific roles and geos.
- Diversity goal-setting – Establish 3-5 year targets based on demographics progression modelling.
- Investment prioritisation – Determine the urgency of upskilling initiatives based on rising demand for specific skills.
- Hiring process optimisation – Discover bottlenecks by comparing time-to-fill benchmarks.
- Business expansion planning – Identify geographies ripe for new initiatives based on available talent.
- Budget and headcount allocation – Model recruiting capacity required to meet growth forecasts.
- Lifecycle mapping – Track customer segment behaviour to anticipate associated talent needs.
| Objective | Expanded Capability | Potential Impact |
|---|---|---|
| Workforce planning | Hiring demand analytics | Optimised future org design |
| Competitive intelligence | Executive movement tracking | Identify leadership advantages |
| Hiring optimisation | Process bottleneck identification | Reduced time-to-fill |
As teams get more adept with Insights, possibilities abound to leverage data across the talent lifecycle and link to business strategy.
Conclusion
The data and insights available in LinkedIn Talent Insights provide a powerful opportunity for talent leaders to inform strategy with real-time market analytics. Organisations can optimise their talent practices, adapt quickly to shifts, and make strategic decisions backed by actionable intelligence by taking a data-driven approach across the various applications outlined. The key is developing the processes and culture to embed these analytics into workflows truly. LinkedIn Insights can be a strategic asset with the proper foundation for your evolving talent strategy.
This article provides an in-depth guide on how talent acquisition teams can strategically leverage LinkedIn Talent Insights to optimise their recruitment efforts. It outlines various use cases of Talent Insights across talent strategy, including discovering new talent pools based on location data, managing hiring manager expectations with data, benchmarking against industry trends, setting diversity and inclusion goals, gaining competitive intelligence, analysing current talent supply and gaps, optimising sourcing strategy, embedding insights into ongoing market research, and extracting maximum value from the data. The article covers best practices for integrating Talent Insights into existing workflows to enable data-driven decision-making across recruitment functions. It demonstrates how taking a metrics-driven approach can help teams adapt quickly to market shifts, increase the quality of hires, and gain a competitive edge in attracting top talent.
Ntiative IT Recruitment is a leading IT and technology recruitment firm specialising in connecting top tech talent with innovative companies. For over 5 years, Ntiative has leveraged data-driven insights and deep industry expertise to match clients with the ideal candidates to meet their business needs. Our recruiters stay on the pulse of the latest tech hiring trends to source qualified candidates across key IT roles in Poland. At Ntiative, we combine a high-touch, consultative approach with the intelligence of AI-powered talent analytics. This enables us to understand both candidates’ aspirations and clients’ priorities, facilitating successful partnerships. As a trusted advisor, we empower companies to build agile, future-ready teams that drive impact through technology.
Ntiative has been an early adopter of Linkedin Talent Insights and has won the Linkedin Talent Awards for 2022.
Read also our other posts in the Talent Insights series:
- Angular - Angular Developers in Poland: A Deep Talent Pool to Tap Into
- AR/AV - How to Tap into Poland's Tech Talent for Your Open AR/AV Roles
- Artificial Intelligence - AI in Poland: A Breakdown of the Talent Pool
- Business Analyst - The Business Analyst Talent Pool in Poland
- C++ - C++: An Indispensable Talent Pool in the Polish Tech Industry
- C# - The Power of C# in Poland’s Tech Scene
- Cyber Security - Cyber Security in Poland: A Peek into an Enigmatic Domain
- DevOps - Riding the DevOps Wave: Tech Hiring in Poland
- Gdansk's Talent Pool - Gdansk’s Tech Talent Pool in 2023
- Go | Golang - Golang Skills in High Demand: Examining Poland's Talent Pool of Go Developers
- Google's Talent Pool - Google’s Move in Poland: A Dive into the Tech Giant’s Talent Pool
- IT Support - The IT Support Talent Pool in Poland
- Java - A Summary Analysis of the Java Job Market in Poland
- JavaScript - Exploring the Tech Hiring Landscape in Poland: A Deep Dive into the JavaScript Scene
- Krakow's Talent Pool - Krakow’s Tech Talent Pool in 2023 | Krakow's Tech Talent Pool (2025 Q1)
- Machine Learning - Polish Machine Learning Developers Transforming Generative AI
- Mobile: iOS and Android - The State of Mobile Development in Poland in 2023
- PHP - PHP Remains a Core Web Development Skill in Poland
- Poland - Poland's Tech Talent Pool In 2024 - Movers and Shakers
- Python - Python: The Popular Choice Among Programmers in Poland
- QA and Automated Testing - The State of QA and Automated Testing in Poland: An In-Depth Look
- Quants - Quantitative Development: A Future-Proof Career Path
- Robotic Process Automation - A Guide to the Robotic Process Automation Talent Pool in Poland
- Salesforce - The Explosive Growth of Salesforce Skills in Poland
- SAP Technical Modules - The Growing Demand for SAP Technical Skills in Poland
- ServiceNow - ServiceNow Skills See Meteoric Rise in Poland
- Talent Insights - How to use LinkedIn Talent Insights for your recruitment strategy
- Technical Leadership - The Key to Unlocking Technical Leadership in Poland
- TypeScript - The TypeScript Talent Pool in Poland (2024)
- UX/UI - The Maturing State of UX/UI Design in Poland
- Warsaw's Talent Pool - Warsaw’s Tech Talent Pool in 2023
- Wroclaw's Talent Pool - Wroclaw's Tech Talent Pool in 2023 | Wroclaw's Tech Talent Pool (2025 Q1)
