Millennials are joining
On Monday, LinkedIn announced a new standalone “LinkedIn Students” app, aimed at helping soon-to-be college graduates search for jobs that could be a fit, network and relieve some of the major stress students can face hunting for their first job out of college. LinkedIn describes the app as a job exploration guide. The tool offers personalized job recommendations and postings based on the career paths of LinkedIn’s more than 400 million users. The app’s algorithm is guided in part by the career paths of professionals who graduated from the same college and with the same major as a particular student. The app also generates a list of suggested professionals on LinkedIn students could contact to try to learn more about the role, the broader field or how to apply.
“What students really need from us is help finding their first job out of school,” LinkedIn product manager Ada Yu said, noting that students often are aware of the need to network professionally, but don’t always know how to start. “It’s a looming thing they are thinking about, and we have rich data that we can help them through this process. We want students to check out others’ career paths because their paths might really inspire them.”
An example role on LinkedIn Students. (Courtesy LinkedIn)
Nearly one in 10 students goes to college to get better jobs, but 44% of graduates are underemployed, according to the New York Federal Reserve. The unemployment rate of college graduates in the U.S. is about 7%, according to the Economic Policy Institute. LinkedIn currently has more than 40 million college students and recent graduates, who have not yet started their first job, on its network.
“I see so much more potential to help students assess whether a job will be good for them,” Yu said. “The app can get so much smarter.”
To join the app, students share their college, major and graduation date. If they don’t already have a LinkedIn profile, they’ll be asked to make one. The app’s design resembles swiping through a deck of cards. The first card shows users a role they might like with accompanying information such as a job description, skills needed for the role, its median salary, related job openings and similar positions a student might find interesting. Cards then show recommended companies and alumni students should consider contacting, typically professionals who have graduated within the last five years.
The format breaks up content into bite-sized pieces to make it easy to start and stop sessions on-the-go, for example during a commute or when the user has a few spare minutes. LinkedIn first piloted the apps at San Jose State University and the University of Central Florida. In tests, the format helped make job searching feel less overwhelming, the company said. Tests also showed that students preferred the professional feel of the current app to more Snapchat-like designs that were considered earlier. College career centers around the country can share job postings and career-related events with LinkedIn to appear in the app, viewable to their specific student body.
LinkedIn's newest app aims to help college students job hunt in bite-sized sessions. (Courtesy... [+]
The app serves up work-related content and videos, for example, articles about interviewing or negotiating a salary. It also features a small number of career-related sponsored posts by JP Morgan in an “Extra Credit” tab, which prompts students to fill out a more detailed profile. A star button on each card, whether for an article, person, role or company, gives students a way to indicate their preferences and get better recommendations. The app launched in English on iOS and Android in the U.S. on Monday and should become available in more countries over time.
LinkedIn said many of the features in the “Education” tab of its flagship app are being dissolved, with the exception of university pages and alumni connections, to better emphasize job hunting. The company said in the future the new app could feature an integration with LinkedIn-owned video tutorial service Lynda.com.
