While Instagram is currently seeing the most hype in the social media world, LinkedIn, the professional social network, is quietly building upon its own success, and boosting its functionality and options to cater to increased demand.
According to LinkedIn:
"The LinkedIn community has never been stronger, with 630M+ members and record levels of engagement (up 24% year over year). We’ve grown from 300,000 to 20 million job postings in the past five years, with members applying to 25 million jobs every week and a new hire made every 8 seconds using LinkedIn."
It may not seem like it, but momentum is growing on the platform, which may present new opportunities for marketers willing to spend the time and effort to understand the relative shifts.
And this week, LinkedIn has announced a raft of new changes to its job listings and tools, catering to the aforementioned millions of users who are now using the app as a key connector to the same.
Here's what's been announced:
Redesigned Jobs Home
First off, LinkedIn has revamped its Jobs section to better cater to user needs.
As explained by LinkedIn:
"The redesigned jobs homepage streamlines LinkedIn Jobs into a single search and scrolling model making it easier to find, review and apply the jobs that are right for you. Need to break from your search? We’ll now automatically save your search and you can dive right back in with a single click or tap on Jobs home."
As you can see here, the Jobs listing is less cluttered, and more singularly focused on the advertised roles, making it easier for users to scan through available opportunities.
Instant Job Alerts
LinkedIn has also redesigned its job alerts system to ensure members are sent relevant, timely notifications for any newly posted roles that meet their criteria.
LinkedIn says that job seekers who are among the first 25 applicants are 3x more likely to land the job, which is why it's redesigned its job alerts system to align with your previously searched filters. Alerts are personalized based on your activity and skills, and can be switched on at any time, helping you maximize your opportunities.
Salary Insights for All
LinkedIn is also making its Salary Insights data available to all members.
Up till now, Salary Insights has only been available to Premium members who first submit their own salary info. Now, the option will be available on all listings for roles in the US, UK and Canada, helping to provide more context around what you should expect to be paid for advertised roles, based on estimates.
Skill Assessments
A new feature that LinkedIn's also looking to add is 'Skill Assessments', which will give members the ability to take relevant quizzes and surveys to better display their relative understanding of, and capability in, advertised job functions.
Updated Recruiter Tools
In addition to new options for job seekers, LinkedIn's also looking to streamline its recruiter tools by bringing its various jobs tools into a unified platform, which will be better aligned to recruiter needs and usage.
Its also adding in new tools to better match relevant candidates to advertised roles, with advanced matching systems based on LinkedIn's extensive professional dataset.
LinkedIn's also adding a new 'Screening Questions' option for recruiters to narrow down the applicant field with a series of yes/no questions related to job requirements.
In addition, LinkedIn's also adding a new messaging history functionality, which will enable recruiters to view a full communication log of discussion between their company and the candidate, and a new option to message up to 25 candidates at once to inform them that they were unsuccessful in their application.
There's a lot to take in, underlining LinkedIn's advancing systems for matching the right members with the right roles.
You can read more about the specific updates to LinkedIn's recruitment systems here, while LinkedIn is also running a series of webinars on the updates next month.