“Sociable” is the latest commentary on important social media developments and trends from industry expert Andrew Hutchinson of Social Media Today.
As LinkedIn continues to add more features to help creators stand out in the app, it also needs to keep its core purpose in mind, which is to enable its members to advance their professional careers, which, of course, will occur mostly outside of the app itself.
And while some people are able to make money as online creators, the vast majority of LinkedIn users are trying to build their profile in order to better stand out to prospective employers and partners, with a view to making business connections in real life.
Which is why this is an important update.
This week, LinkedIn’s rolling out its new “Top Job” option to all LinkedIn Premium subscribers, which enables LinkedIn subscribers to mark three roles per month as a “Top Choice”, which alerts recruiters to their extra interest in the role.
As you can see in this sequence, within the “Easy Apply” process in the app, Premium users will now also be able to tick the “Top choice job” box for a chosen role, which will then make your profile stand out to the relevant recruiter, with a green badge that’ll appear on your application in the Recruiter platform.
As explained by LinkedIn:
“Top Choice Jobs uniquely connects both sides of the job market: job seekers get to stand out, while hirers see deeper intent signals from applicants who are most passionate about the role. But that’s not all. Applicants can take that extra step to bolster their application and get that extra edge by adding an elevator pitch.”
LinkedIn’s been testing the option with selected Premium users over the past four months, and has found that marking your application with the “Top Choice” flag has led to increased awareness and action from recruiters.
“Premium subscribers who’ve applied to LinkedIn Job Posts using Top Choice Jobs are on average 43% more likely to receive a message back from a recruiter.”
It could be worth considering, while LinkedIn’s also assessing the viability of adding the same functionality for free users of the app, enabling you to flag a selection of roles each month that you really want to add extra emphasis to.
Of course, by extension, that also means that any roles which you don’t flag as a “Top Choice” could view themselves as also-rans, and not your ideal option. As the feature gets expanded more widely, that could potentially become a negative, which may hurt your job application process. For example, you can only mark three roles per month as a “Top Choice”, which means that any others could potentially downrank your application, in favor of candidates that have marked it as a priority. With limited “Top Choice” selections, that could become problematic at a larger scale, which may be why LinkedIn is gradually testing and experimenting with the option.
But right now, in limited availability, LinkedIn is seeing solid results, which could make it, at the least, worth an experiment.
And again, it’s an important focus for the app, which, like all platforms, is looking to court creators to keep them posting. But it also needs to connect its in-stream efforts to offline opportunities as best it can.
Options like this can help facilitate that connection, leading to more opportunity.
