Credit: Pxfuel

The Department for Work and Pensions has signed a potential £1m-plus deal with LinkedIn to help support the organisation's recruitment for up to four years.

Newly published procurement information reveals that, on 26 May, the department entered into an initial two-year deal with the company behind the online networking platform. The contract covers “various LinkedIn licence subscriptions”.

This will include nine licences for LinkedIn Recruiter, a hiring platform used by HR professionals or hiring managers talent to “find, connect with, and manage the people you want to be on your team”, according to LinkedIn.

DWP will also have access to Talent Insight, which the tech firm claims offers organisations “over 12 billion data points on talent, companies, jobs, skills, and schools”, which translates into “real-time data including talent supply and demand, company reports, and employer branding metrics”. 

Related content

• Digital skills gaps remain despite civil service adding 10,000 people last year
• Whitehall digital scene a ‘merry-go-round’ as departments scrap for skills – IfG report
• Salaries of government technologists in same pay band differ by as much as £40,000

The contract provides DWP with an annual tally of 201 job adverts – dubbed ‘Job slots’, as well as 1,500 generic ‘Work With Us’ adverts and a dedicated career page on LinkedIn, tailored for a ‘large enterprise’-level organisation.

This page will be used “for recruitment purposes across DWP”, the contract said.

A total of £364,575 will be spent during each year of the contract, adding up to £729,150 over the course of the initial 24 months. If the department signs both of the two optional one-year extensions, the deal will ultimately be worth £1.46m to LinkedIn.

The DWP contract is the latest – and seemingly biggest – of a number of deals awarded to the online professional network in recent years to support the recruitment efforts of a range of customers in government and the wider public sector. 

This includes a two-year deal worth £157,367 and signed earlier this year with the Department for Business, Energy and Industrial Strategy, as well as a £600,000 two-year engagement with the Cabinet Office, a key strand of which was supporting hiring at the Government Digital Service.