As the world’s largest professional networking platform (with over a Billion users), LinkedIn recognized AI’s immense potential early on and has evolved a sophisticated AI strategy over the past 5 years.
LinkedIn has integrated AI across its platform, including personalized recommendations in users’ feeds, automated profile suggestions, and advanced job/people matching algorithms.
This AI integration aims to improve relevancy and provide a more customized experience.
LinkedIn offers a unique professional space where intentional actions can lead to substantial outcomes and activities that contribute to your professional growth. It’s where you build your identity.
This article explores 7 of LinkedIn’s most ingenious applications of AI and machine learning algorithms to match people with relevant opportunities and transform how professionals network and companies hire.
The Rise of AI at LinkedIn
Back in 2015, LinkedIn had already started tapping into machine learning for its talent solutions product, LinkedIn Recruiter.
This tool leverages AI to match qualified job candidates with open positions based on the candidate’s profile, skills, and experience.
In 2018, LinkedIn’s Head of AI, Deepak Agarwal, discussed how AI is assisting with various aspects of the platform, such as finding job openings and surfacing better candidates for customers
AI was needed and accepted as part of the LinkedIn platform due to its ability to optimize member experiences, enhance user engagement, and provide personalized career guidance.
The evolution of AI at LinkedIn was ignited by the company’s recognition of the importance of data as a core differentiating factor and its commitment to creating economic opportunities for every member of the global workforce.
AI on LinkedIn assists people in:
- Reaching potential customers
- Serving relevant sponsored content
- Identifying and connecting with new talent pools
LinkedIn has also been using AI extensively to keep its site safe by automatically detecting fake accounts, account takeovers, scraping, and harassment.
In the final quarter of 2023, LinkedIn unveiled a new, AI-infused Premium experience, offering tailored career guidance, job search tools, and generative AI tools.
LinkedIn Learning AI-powered Coaching Experience
LinkedIn introduced a game-changing AI-powered coaching experience aimed at enhancing learning and development on the platform.
This feature allows learners to ask questions and receive narrative answers, making the learning experience more interactive and tailored to individual needs.
The AI integration unlocks a vast library of content, enabling users to transition seamlessly between topics and receive advice on various subjects
Additionally, the new coaching feature offers real-time coaching sessions, reinforcing management and leadership skills through personal AI chatbot interactions.
Here are some of the key features of LinkedIn Learning AI-powered Coaching Experience:
- Real-Time Advice and Personalized Guidance: The chatbot can answer your questions immediately and provide tailored feedback on your learning progress.
- Tailored Content Recommendations: Based on your conversations with the chatbot, it will recommend specific courses, articles, and other resources that are most relevant to your current learning needs.
- Skills Assessment and Development Plans: It can assess your current skills and recommend personalized learning plans to help you fill in any gaps or improve specific areas of expertise.
- Continuous Learning Support: You can access the chatbot anytime, anywhere to get help with specific tasks, ask questions, or receive encouragement.
This innovation is part of LinkedIn’s larger push for the benefits of AI education to transform learning and development across the platform.
It’s like having a virtual assistant that is exclusively dedicated to assisting you in achieving your career objectives through constant learning.
Recruiter 2024
LinkedIn Recruiter 2024 is a new AI-assisted recruiting experience that makes hiring easier and more efficient for talent leaders.
It uses a combination of generative pre-trained transformers (GPT) and proprietary artificial intelligence models to provide AI-assisted conversational search.
Which more quickly and precisely surfaces candidates, streamlines the sourcing workflow, and automates scheduled follow-up communications.
Cool stuff.
The AI-powered candidate discovery feature provides valuable insights to refine recruiting strategies, empowering talent leaders to align recruiting processes with the expectations of the modern job market and build a robust and qualified talent pool.
They’re also launching CRM Connect, an integration that connects LinkedIn Recruiter and Candidate Relationship Management systems to give recruiters a more efficient way to work across both systems.
Accelerate for Campaign Manage
LinkedIn is announcing a new AI-powered ad campaign creation tool called Accelerate that can create an end-to-end B2B marketing campaign in 5 minutes.
It analyzes the advertiser’s website, LinkedIn page, and prior ads to recommend creatives, audiences, and optimizations to reach the right B2B targets.
Advertisers can adjust and fine-tune the generated campaigns before launching. The “Assist” feature also provides AI recommendations to improve campaign performance.
Once launched, the campaigns are dynamically optimized by AI to shift budget and bids to the best-performing placements and creatives over time.
The AI-powered candidate discovery feature provides valuable insights to refine recruiting strategies, empowering talent leaders to align recruiting processes with the expectations of the modern job market and build a robust and qualified talent pool.
The goal is to use AI to save marketers time on routine tasks so they can focus more on strategy and creativity. Surveys show marketers believe AI will support their work.
Accelerate brings together several existing LinkedIn automation features like Predictive Audiences into one streamlined workflow. Initial testing is being done with a small group of B2B ad agencies in English in the US.
Expansion to more marketers in North America, India, and Australia is planned for Q4 2023, with a global rollout expected in 2024.
Personalized Outreach Messages
Outreach is so important, but it can be tedious, especially when getting a “writer’s block” trying to craft the perfect message on a blank page.
Well, Not anymore.
Personalization in outreach messages on LinkedIn has seen a significant increase in acceptance rates. AI-Assisted Messages is a feature that allows recruiters to create unique, customized messages with just one click.
This feature combines candidate profile information with company and role details to generate a message tailored for each candidate.
The Likelihood of Interest feature in Recruiter helps recruiters identify candidates who are most likely to engage with their outreach messages.
This is massive and has a direct relationship with ROI.
Here’s a detailed breakdown of how it works:
- Profile Information: AI-assisted messages draw on the profile information provided by candidates about their skills, experience, and “Open to Work” status. It then combines it with information about the recruiter’s company and the open role, such as job title, projects, responsibilities, location, and salary.
- Message Generation: When a recruiter clicks the “Compose” icon associated with a candidate in LinkedIn Recruiter, they will see a button that says “Draft personalized message.” Clicking on this button will produce a message created by generative AI specifically for that candidate, all with just one click.
- Personalization: After generating an initial message, recruiters can click “Personalize the message” to fine-tune the message. They can customize the fields used by the AI model and generate a new draft. Recruiters also have the option to edit the content directly before sending the message.
- Language Support: At present, AI-Assisted Messages are available only in English.
- Feedback Mechanism: Recruiters can provide feedback on the AI-assisted message directly in the Compose Message window. They can indicate if the AI-assisted message performed well (thumbs up) or poorly (thumbs down), just like ChatGPT.
It can improve efficiency and increase In Mail success rates. To access this new feature, go to a candidate’s profile card on LinkedIn Recruiter and look for the Interest row, where you can see the likelihood of interest in green or slate gray fonts.
AI-Powered Sales Navigator
Sales Navigator platform (2024) is yet another new LinkedIn AI-powered feature. These features are designed to enhance the capabilities of the Sales Navigator and provide more effective tools for sales professionals.
Here are the key highlights of the new AI-powered features for Sales Navigator:
- AI-Assisted Search Tools: LinkedIn has integrated cutting-edge AI search tools into Sales Navigator to help sales professionals find their ideal leads with precision and efficiency. These tools leverage advanced algorithms to identify prospects that closely match the target audience, making prospecting and lead generation more effective
- Enhanced Insights and Recommendations: The updated Sales Navigator provides users with deeper insights and recommendations, empowering them to make informed decisions. AI plays a crucial role in delivering these enhanced insights and recommendations, enabling sales professionals to optimize their strategies
- Empowering Professionals with AI Skills: LinkedIn is offering free AI courses on its learning platform, LinkedIn Learning, to empower professionals to acquire valuable AI skills and knowledge. This initiative aims to support professionals in adapting to the evolving job market and enhancing their expertise in AI-related domains
- Career Growth and Networking: By combining AI-powered search tools with free AI courses, LinkedIn is positioning itself as a hub for professional growth and networking. Sales professionals can leverage these tools to expand their reach, identify potential clients, and stay at the forefront of their industry
LinkedIn’s Vast Data Assets Fuel AI Innovation
LinkedIn’s VAST Data Platform is designed for deep learning AI, which enables the company to leverage its vast data assets for AI innovation and improve its products and services.
This is one of the reasons why it’s one of the most valuable brands in the world.
The depth of professional data and engagement on LinkedIn allows their AI systems to truly understand members’ needs and provide tailored guidance around skills, connections, and opportunities relevant to each individual.
LinkedIn recognized early on that data is a core differentiating factor in its business, and it has been weaving AI into its products and services to enhance user experiences and provide personalized career guidance.
The company’s vision is to create economic opportunities for every member of the global workforce.
AI plays a crucial role in achieving this goal by helping recommend job opportunities, organizing users’ feeds, ensuring timely and informative notifications, and suggesting learning content to help users acquire new skills.
As AI continues to evolve, LinkedIn is seeing an entire ecosystem of technical roles that support different stages of the AI lifecycle, such as AI specialists, data scientists, data engineers, and cloud engineers.
LinkedIn’s “Future of Work” report highlights the impact of AI on different industries and how users expect AI advances to affect their respective sectors.
What Does It Mean for You?
The suite of new AI-powered features LinkedIn is rolling out signals a major shift in how professionals/you can leverage the platform to advance your careers.
For over a billion members, these innovations can deeply impact their experiences – both positively and negatively.
On the positive side, you now have an AI advantage.
The machine learning algorithms use LinkedIn’s rich data sets on professional profiles, jobs, skills in demand, and career trajectories to provide users with tailored guidance personalized to their backgrounds and aspirations.
This can open powerful opportunities.
If you feel stuck in your career, LinkedIn’s AI assistant may surface a resonant new direction aligned with your strengths.
The AI can parse all available openings suited for you. If there’s a skills gap, it will recommend precise training. And leveraging your professional network, relevant connections are suggested to help you get there.
We’re essentially looking at the rise of augmented intelligence for advancing professional journeys with an AI mentor by your side.
However, there are risks if you become overdependent on LinkedIn’s algorithms for career decisions or self-perception.
Firstly, AI has inherent limitations in capturing the nuances of soft skills, emotional states, individual whims, and serendipities that influence career paths.
Solely conforming to the AI’s suggestions may constrain one’s lateral growth.
Secondly, unfettered access to data on millions of professionals can promote unhealthy comparisons if the AI tools keep putting you side-by-side against more “successful” people, sowing self-doubt and eroding self-worth.
Therefore, the guidance is to embrace these AI tools judiciously, being aware of their pros and cons. Use them as inputs to supplement your self-knowledge – but don’t outsource your career or sense of fulfillment to these algorithms.
The Future of AI
We see an exciting future ahead where AI transforms careers and the work landscape in profoundly positive ways. Here are a few key trends that give us optimism:
Democratization of Opportunity
AI lowers barriers and enables more equitable access to career resources, mentors, and training for high-demand skills. Platforms like LinkedIn leverage data to surface hidden potentials in people that human biases often overlook.
Rehumanizing Work
As AI handles repetitive administrative and analytical tasks, human talents find greater expression in passion areas like creativity, relationships, strategy, and innovation. This “augmented intelligence” model lets humans focus more on meaning.
Accelerating Growth
With personalized guidance systems powered by real-time data, professionals can develop skills strategically matched to market needs and advance faster. On-demand learning also becomes easier.
Enriching Jobs
Humans freed from mundane tasks and assisted by AI find greater fulfillment, mastery, and impact in their jobs across sectors like healthcare, education, and sustainability.
Of course, realizing this promise requires thoughtful regulation and ethical standards around data rights, privacy, and accountability to prevent potential downsides of entrenching bias or over-automation.
But on balance, we’re hopeful the partnership of human talents and AI leading to more rapid growth, expanded opportunity, and deeper meaning heralds a golden age of enriching and regenerative work.
