LinkedIn has been launching a number of new features to improve engagement on its site, and today it’s taking that strategy out to one of its premium products, LinkedIn Recruiter, with the launch of a new look for the homepage. It brings the look and function of the Recruiter page closer to that of LinkedIn’s main homepage — including the new search features introduced in March. The idea is to increase the amount of time spent on the page and usage of LinkedIn’s Recruiter homepage, both to get more people signed up to use it, and to make sure that those who are already paying for premium features continue to do so.
LinkedIn, which now has over 200 million members, in February reported strong earnings for Q4, up 81% to $304 million. More than half of that revenue, $161 million, comes from Talent Solutions, which includes the company’s recruitment business. Currently, Talent Solutions is growing faster than overall revenues; they were up 90% on a year ago.
LinkedIn wants to become the default place for people looking for new jobs, and for those hiring them, moving both categories of users away from more traditional channels direct-mail resumes or job boards — opting instead to pay for LinkedIn’s recruitment services. The premium offerings let recruiters, for example, search for relevant candidates across all of the LinkedIn network, compared to limits of 500 for lower tiers of the service.
As part of that effort, LinkedIn is trying to take features and products that have become hallmarks of consumer-focused social media sites like Facebook and Twitter, and bring them into LinkedIn’s more enterprise-focused platform — its own twist on the consumerization of IT.
“Most recruiting products are outdated and designed for CIOs, not recruiters,” LinkedIn Talent Solutions’ Head of Product Parker Barrile noted in a recruitment presentation at LinkedIn’s HQ earlier today. “Fortunately, the consumerization of the enterprise has begun to infiltrate the recruiting industry and is influencing a new generation of products. Consumerization means putting the user’s priorities first.”
The new homepage acts like a recruitment dashboard, where users can look in and glance at different data points relevant to the process of finding people and filling jobs.
In addition to a new search feature, users will be able to tailor a status update river to monitor individual candidates, as well as news related to particular jobs that are being filled. It also offers users a recommendation engine to suggest people who might be good for hiring, based on past browsing history.
You can also get updates on particular jobs you are tracking, and the page also includes one of my favorite LinkedIn stalker alert features — a look at who’s been checking out your profile.
A screenshot of how it looks is below. As you can see, it effectively resembles a cleaner, pared-down version of LinkedIn itself. “A consumer app in the front, but has the power and rich feature set of an enterprise tool in the back,” as Liz Burstein, LinkedIn’s product manager for Talent Solutions, notes.
