Sporting a new look and with some new features — including a recommendation engine that ‘learns’ the kind of people a recruiter most want — LinkedIn Recruiter is getting an official relaunch this morning.
The redesign itself is an update of the classic LinkedIn Recruiter look to make it more consistent with the LinkedIn homepage redesign that was introduced last fall.
Parker Barril, Linkedin’s Talent Solutions head of product, unveiled the fresh, new LinkedIn Recruiter at a live and webcast user event — ConnectIn — in San Francisco. As he put it, “the consumerization of the enterprise,” the trend toward making products and services easier to use, “is influencing a new generation of products.”
But LinkedIn Recruiter is not just putting on a pretty new face. In conjunction with the redesign, LinkedIn is adding a recommendation engine that, like matching services on job boards and tracking systems, will make suggestions for people recruiters may want to follow. Unlike those other matching systems which present lists of candidates ranked on how well they match your job description, the “People You May Want To Hire” feature uses your searching habits to come up with suggestions.
At first, you may get fairly generic recommendations. As you drill down, filtering your search to an ever-finer degree, the suggestions will more precisely match your search. The more searches you do, the more LinkedIn’s algorithms will understand the kind of people you seek.
Clicking on a recommendation lets you see how good a fit the person is. Then you can add them to those you already follow, associating the person with a specific search. Until you decide otherwise, every time they update their LinkedIn profile, you’ll know. The more they contribute to the groups they’ve joined, and the more actively they manage their careers, the better you’ll get to know them.
This is a convenient way to build a talent pipeline and decide who you want to pursue when the right job comes open. LinkedIn Recruiter clients have long been able to do that. But you had to go actively search for people meeting the criteria. You still have to search, but once you do, LinkedIn helps make it an ongoing, automated process.