TL;DR. LinkedIn Recruiter vs Sales Navigator: How to choose the right tool?
I analyzed LinkedIn Recruiter and Sales Navigator and created this guide to help you choose the best solution for your hiring needs.
Here’s a comparison table to help you choose between these solutions:
| Choose LinkedIn Recruiter if | Choose LinkedIn Sales Navigator if |
|---|---|
| You frequently hire for multiple roles or work at a recruitment agency. | You hire occasionally or have a small-scale hiring team. |
| You need advanced recruiting features, such as “Open to Work” signals, hiring filters, and AI-powered candidate suggestions. | You want to reduce costs and already have access to Sales Navigator through your sales team. |
| You need to manage and engage candidates at scale efficiently. | Your company is already using Sales Navigator integrated with LinkedIn automation tools for bulk lead generation and outreach. |
| You or your team is already proficient with LinkedIn Recruiter, so onboarding will be easy. | You or your team is already comfortable with Sales Navigator, so switching tools isn’t necessary. |
Read the whole article for a more detailed analysis of both plans!
Outline
LinkedIn Recruiter for hiring candidates
Let’s examine the key solution for talent acquisition offered by LinkedIn — LinkedIn Recruiter, including its plans, features, and advantages.
What is LinkedIn Recruiter?
LinkedIn Recruiter is a premium LinkedIn tool designed for hiring managers and talent acquisition specialists. It helps users find, engage with, and track candidates on this social media platform. Its features include advanced search capabilities, InMail credits, automated messaging, and analytics, among others.
LinkedIn Recruiter plans
There are two versions of this tool: Recruiter and Recruiter Lite. The first one offers a more robust set of features and is tailored for businesses that are constantly hiring, usually agencies or large corporations. The second is more suitable for smaller companies that are occasionally looking for employees.
Unfortunately, LinkedIn doesn’t share the pricing information for a Recruiter plan, only the Recruiter Lite plan, which starts at $139.99* per month.
* Pricing of all LinkedIn plans depends on your platform usage, goals, etc., so I always check it on the platform.
Benefits of using LinkedIn Recruiter for talent acquisition
LinkedIn Recruiter was designed with all of the platform’s nuances in mind. It allows you to use the data and capabilities of LinkedIn to the fullest during your hiring process. With this plan, you unlock the following advantages:
Access to an entire LinkedIn network. You’re not limited to applicants. Instead, you can find and connect with top talent who are not actively job hunting. As a result, you can fill roles with high-quality candidates who might have never applied on their own.
- Easier and more targeted outreach. Owing to the plan’s advanced filters, you can narrow your list of candidates to the best prospects in a couple of clicks. Then, you can contact them with InMails regardless of whether you’ve connected or not.
- Faster job posting and promotion. Getting impressions on your posts organically requires time and effort that busy hiring specialists might not have. With AI-enhanced tools and job advertisement credits, you can elevate the quality of your job posts and expand their reach.
- Better coordination and collaboration of the hiring team. Built-in collaboration tools enable your entire team to stay on the same page. Fewer handoffs, less confusion, and faster decisions prevent promising candidates from slipping through the cracks in the process.
One of the most valuable features of LinkedIn Recruiter for me is the ability to hide candidates you’ve already contacted. That means you save time and avoid doing the same job twice.
Recruiter at Snov.io
💡 Pro-tip: To streamline your hiring outreach, employ LinkedIn automation software. It will allow you to spare precious hours and significantly expand your candidate pool.
For example, use LI Email Finder to gather your candidate’s emails from LinkedIn search, personal, and company pages into your database. Then interact with them via multiple channels, increasing the probability of replies.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator for hiring candidates
Though Sales Navigator was initially created for sales reps, recruiters sometimes use it for talent hunting instead of Recruiter. Let’s discover why.
What is LinkedIn Sales Navigator?
LinkedIn Sales Navigator is a paid LinkedIn tool for sales professionals, business development representatives, and anyone doing outbound prospecting. It helps users source, approach, and build relationships with potential customers on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Sales Navigator plans
Sales Navigator offers three tiers:
- Core
- Advanced
- Advanced Plus.
They offer prospecting capabilities like advanced search filters, lead activity alerts, InMail credits, and analytics. Depending on their plan, users can also access AI-supplemented features, including buyer intent and lead analysis.
Sales Navigator’s basic pricing starts at $89.99 per month, which is cheaper than Recruiter Lite. That’s why this plan is often considered by talent acquisition specialists as an alternative to the popular Recruiter account.
Benefits of using LinkedIn Sales Navigator for talent acquisition
Indeed, if you know how to make it work for hiring, Sales Navigator can offer some tempting benefits for recruiting:
- Access to an entire LinkedIn network. Sales Navigator provides access to extended LinkedIn networks and unlimited profile views. It also enables you to interact with candidates who haven’t accepted your connection request through InMails.
❗️Remember: Sales Navigator offers only 50 InMail credits in comparison with 150 credits offered by Recruiter. To minimize their usage, learn how to write effective connection messages.
Watch this video and pick up connection message ideas that will get you to the candidate’s inbox:
- Highly targeted sourcing. With Sales Navigator, you can apply 50+ search filters. This helps quickly narrow your talent pool to users who match your ideal candidate profile. More so, this tool allows saving searches and getting automated alerts whenever new prospective candidates match your criteria.
- Simplified candidate tracking and management. You can save potential hires into lists, add notes, and track interactions. Better transparency and organization of the hiring process ensure better chances of securing the top talent.
The difference between Sales Navigator and Recruiter: key features compared
Take a close look at the table below to understand how the Recruiter and Sales Navigator compare:
| Feature | LinkedIn Recruiter | LinkedIn Sales Navigator | |||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Recruiter Lite | Recruiter | Core | Advanced | Advanced Plus | |
| Advanced search filters | 20+ | 40+ | 50+ | 50+ | 50+ |
| Boolean search | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| InMail credits | 30 per month | 150 per month | 50 per month | 50 per month | 50 per month |
| Bulk messaging | ❌ | ✅ | ❌ | ❌ | ❌ |
| Full profile view without connecting | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ | ✅ |
| AI-powered suggestions | Hiring-specific | Hiring-specific | Sales-specific | Sales-specific | Sales-specific |
| Pricing (per month) | $139.99 | Custom | $89.99 | $139.99 | Custom |
Which plan works best for hiring top talent?
Choosing between Recruiter and Sales Navigator depends on multiple factors. I recommend considering the following aspects:
1. Frequency of new hires
If you’re part of a hiring team at a large company or work at an agency, you often need to fill multiple roles at once. LinkedIn Recruiter is likely the best bet in such cases. It’s built for recruiting professionals, so it has everything they need to search, engage, and manage candidates at scale.
It provides access to job seeker signals, like the “Open to Work” badge, hiring-specific filters, and AI-powered candidate suggestions. These valuable capabilities are absent from Sales Navigator, and you can’t make up for them with most integrations.
2. Budget
As the LinkedIn Recruiter Lite plan is more expensive than Sales Navigator’s starter account, some hiring professionals recommend going for Sales Navigator to save costs. Especially if you’ve got a small-scale hiring team.
It’s also possible that your company’s sales specialists already use Sales Navigator. Maybe they have already integrated it with LinkedIn automation tools for lead generation. Then, instead of buying two separate tools, you can continue using Sales Navigator for your recruiting needs.
3. Your proficiency with either LinkedIn Recruiter or Sales Navigator
As the saying goes, time is money. Learning a completely new tool often takes time. Meanwhile, using software you’re already familiar with is more cost-effective. So, if you’re already using any of these plans, don’t rush the switch. Also, consider the skills and preferences of other team members. Select software that facilitates a more efficient workflow for all specialists.
How to combine Sales Navigator with LinkedIn automation for recruitment
Fans of Sales Navigator, reluctant to close their subscription, often ask: Can you have Sales Navigator and Recruiter at the same time?
My key concern is that in business, saving costs is a sort of religion. Think whether you really need a separate platform for recruiting at the moment. After all, despite its limited recruitment-specific capabilities, LinkedIn Sales Navigator can become a powerful part of your hiring tech stack.
Its search capabilities are sometimes even superior to Recruiter’s. With access to advanced filters, you can get a broader view of potential candidates outside your network.
What is lacking in Sales Navigator is bulk messaging and InMail credits. But that’s where automation steps in.
By combining Sales Navigator with automated LinkedIn prospecting tools, you can:
- Extract contact information (like verified email addresses) from candidate profiles and search pages.
- Build relationships with prospects by automatically viewing their profile, liking their posts, and connecting with them, even when you’re offline.
- Bypass the InMail and invite limitations with multichannel campaigns that encompass both LinkedIn messages and email.
- Preserve the human touch in your interactions with potential hires by personalizing messages.
- Protect your account from being restricted or suspended by leveraging smart connection, messaging, and profile view limits.
- Analyze the effectiveness of your hiring outreach with detailed campaign reports.
- Keep track of your hiring process for each prospect by syncing your list of candidates with a CRM.
Combining Sales Navigator with automation tools allows you to enjoy the advantages of both deep search and streamlined outreach. Thus, it works great as a budget-friendly alternative to enterprise-grade recruiting software.
Key takeaways
LinkedIn Recruiter and Sales Navigator were originally created for different user groups. However, both plans can be used to search for candidates.
I recommend opting for LinkedIn Recruiter if you’re constantly sifting through large volumes of candidates. Whether you’re an in-house hiring specialist or work at an agency, it can support your workflows. It’s ideal for talent sourcing and tracking and allows you to achieve a high degree of collaboration.
But if you’re doing light recruiting or must stick to a tighter budget, I would advise you to give Sales Navigator a try, especially if you’re already using it for sales. Combined with LinkedIn automation software from Snov.io, it can enhance your hiring process and make it easier.
Create an account today and see how your recruiting efficiency reaches new heights!
