LinkedIn’s new moves

In talking about LinkedIn’s new moves, you have to remember that it is big – literally. It has more than 15,000 employees in 30+ offices around the world. It has 645 million members in 200 countries. And it’s trying some new moves – because it has to.

So what’s going on? Well, back in 2018, the company announced that it had an ATS in development that it called TalentHub. Although LinkedIn already had an ATS for big companies called Recruiter System Connect, the new ATS was designed for medium and small businesses. Now – finally – TalentHub has been rolled out, and in a bit of lucky timing, just after Google announced the imminent demise of Hire, its ATS for SMBs. Will TalentHub fill the gap? Hard to tell. But since it ties into LinkedIn’s member base, I suspect it stands a reasonable chance.

But there’s more! LinkedIn also added Skills Assessments for job seekers. The assessments are short and focused on skills that LinkedIn says employers value, such as Excel, Adobe, and coding proficiency. Once a job seeker completes an assessment, they are given a badge that shows up on their LI profile, and they are also able to unlock LinkedIn Learning courses for free (for a limited time, of course!). Nice move by LinkedIn – adding value for employers by providing assessed job seekers, and prompting those same job seekers to use LinkedIn Learning (and eventually, pay for it).

Want to bet those same assessment ‘badges’ show up when an employer uses TalentHub for filling their next job? Of course they will. Will LinkedIn be as successful as Microsoft was in an earlier era with its various certifications? Perhaps. But if all this does is help LinkedIn monetize its training offerings, it will be a huge win for the company. Remember: 645 million members.

It’s not all rainbows and ponies for LinkedIn, though. In thinking about LinkedIn’s new moves, don’t forget that their attempts to prevent scraping of member information have fallen short thus far, as witnessed in the HiQ ruling last month. Will those assessment badges be considered ‘public data’ as well? Probably. But by the time that’s settled, LinkedIn will be on to its next move.

PS: Have you taken the 2019-20 Recruiting Site Trends survey? Last chance! It closes this week – so do it now!!!

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