LinkedIn and Microsoft Commit to Helping 250,000 Companies Hire for Skills

Categories: Business Solutions, Product News
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LinkedIn Corporate Communications

Today, we are expanding the work of our global skills initiative with Microsoft to launch new resources that will help job seekers and employers move to a skills-based economy. 

Since we launched our global skills initiative in June 2020, we’ve helped 30M people around the globe build digital skills for in-demand jobs. Today we are taking our commitment one step further with a new goal to help 250,000 companies make a skills-based hire in 2021 through our new and existing hiring products.

For more information on our vision for a skills-focused workforce and the resources that we’re launching, please see the below:

New LinkedIn Profile tools to help members and job seekers stand out to opportunities

In addition, we’re launching new LinkedIn Profile features to help our members better represent themselves in a more authentic way, and share their career goals and aspirations. A post on our LinkedIn blog today from our Chief Product Officer, Tomer Cohen, gives a full overview of this news.

  • Cover Story allows members to upload a short video to their Profile to bring to life their story. For job seekers, Cover Story is a great way to showcase their personality and demonstrate soft skills to recruiters and hiring managers. 

  • Pronoun fields (optional) where members can add their gender pronouns and showcase their core identity at the top of their Profile.

  • Creator mode helps members who share content and insights on LinkedIn grow a following by more prominently displaying their content and adding hashtags about topics in their area of expertise.

  • Service Pages help freelancers looking to grow their business attract new clients by listing the services they offer, linked to their Profile. 

Virtual job seeking in the age of COVID-19

To understand how the job seeking and hiring process has evolved since COVID-19, we conducted a survey* to job seekers and hiring managers in the U.S. Key findings include:

Authentic representation at work has become increasingly important

  • More than 50% (56%) of job seekers believe how they represent themselves at work has changed since COVID-19.

  • Almost 50% (46%) of respondents say they’re more likely to be their authentic self in how they show up in the workplace vs. a year ago.

  • More than 50% (55%) of job seekers agree that gender is an important aspect of their identity, both in and out of the workplace, and 70% of job seekers believe it’s important that recruiters and hiring managers know their gender pronoun.

  • More than 70% (72%) of hiring managers believe having clarity about a candidates self-identification (i.e. gender pronouns) is beneficial and helps others to be respectful of their identity.

Job seekers are seeking new ways to stand out; demonstrating soft skills is critical

  • Almost 80% (79%) of job seekers believe that as a result of COVID-19, the job search has become more competitive and they need to find new ways to stand out to recruiters.

  • Almost 80% (76%) of job seekers wish there was a better way to represent themselves to recruiters and hiring managers, and more than 70% (74%) believe it is important to highlight soft skills. 

  • Almost 70% (69%) of hiring managers agree that soft skills are hard to assess in a job candidate, and 75% believe a standard resume is insufficient in evaluating a candidate’s soft skills.

Video is a key channel for job seekers to stand out in the hiring process

  • Almost 80% (79%) of hiring managers believe that video has become more important when it comes to interacting with or vetting job candidates, and more than 60% (61%) of job seekers believe a recorded video could be the next iteration of the traditional cover letter. 

  • More than 60% (62%) of job seekers believe sharing more about themselves, their experience and career goals on video could help them land a job. And hiring managers agree - almost 80% (76%) of hiring managers believe seeing a pre-recorded video of a job seeker would be useful.

  • 59% of job seekers believe video is becoming the new norm as part of the job seeking process, and 41% have used video to stand out to recruiters and hiring managers.

  • Job seekers feel sharing a video with hiring managers would be helpful because it allows them to better highlight their personality (57%) and showcase their true self (41%).

 

For more resources and information for job seekers, visit opportunity.linkedin.com.  

*Survey Methedology: Censuswide conducted research on behalf of LinkedIn, online between February 25 - March 2, 2021 among 1,009 Hiring Managers and 2,101 Job Seekers, ages 18-69, in the U.S.