Introducing new ways to discover knowledge, lead groups, meet the hiring team & more + Inspiring conversations about facing fears & gaining confidence

Every few weeks, I share with the team at LinkedIn new products and experiments that seem to be working — or not!— so that we can all learn from each other. I’m publishing these here, too, (with anything confidential x’ed out or removed) to give you some ideas for what we’re building, why we’re building it, and how we operate; I’d love your feedback on everything! – Tomer?

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Hey team,

As many professionals around the world enjoy their summer breaks, we’re coming off several eventful weeks of key growth milestones. We’re continuing to see strong growth among our more than 850 million members, with record levels of professionals joining and engaging on LinkedIn -- even during summertime when many are away from their desks. This is truly a testament to how mission-critical LinkedIn has become to help connect the world’s professionals and make them more productive and successful.

As we closely monitor macroeconomic trends, we’re seeing that even though growth in job postings has slowed, it's still up 17% since the beginning of the calendar year. We’re also seeing high activity among job seekers and hirers with 52M job seekers visiting LinkedIn Jobs every week and 100 job applications submitted every second. It’s important to note that today more than 45% of hirers on LinkedIn explicitly use skills data to more efficiently search and find the best talent. This is a trend we expect will continue to grow rapidly.

Lastly, before we go into our product updates, I want to share an important addition to the languages we support on LinkedIn: Ukrainian, which is now available on both desktop and mobile. Since the war in Ukraine began, there has been increasing sensitivity in Ukraine about speaking Russian. This is a language that around one-third of Ukrainians speak as their native language, and it has been the primary language Ukrainians have engaged in on LinkedIn. With this launch, our goal is to demonstrate our support for our nearly 3.5M Ukrainian members, who can now more easily highlight their skills and experience and get support from the LinkedIn community (see more details in the post below from Josh Graff , LinkedIn's EMEA managing director).

And now, on to our product updates…

1. New ways to discover the voices and conversations that matter most to your career

Every day, millions of conversations take place on LinkedIn -- including some of the best professional knowledge from the people who matter most to your career. In the last year, we’ve seen a 2X increase in people engaging in posts sharing knowledge, ideas, and support. From leadership and career journeys, to design thinking and technology, to DEI and remote work, almost every skill or professional interest is discussed on LinkedIn, often by practitioners who offer their unique expertise.?

That’s why we’re continuously experimenting with new ways to help you discover relevant news, conversations, and voices from people and organizations you might not otherwise know. In addition to surfacing relevant content in Search, you’ll start seeing recommendations for people you might want to follow, or newsletters you might want to subscribe to. Also, we’re starting to test a dedicated space for you to discover trending conversations that align with your interests (see below). These include newsletters and videos, and events curated by our editorial team. As always, we’d love your feedback on these new experiences.?

2. Thinking about your next career opportunity? Now you can meet the Hiring Team

One of the biggest advantages when applying for a new job is knowing who the manager is, or the recruiter or team you’ll be joining. Meeting the hiring team can be an effective way to learn more about the role and increase the chances of standing out as an applicant. That’s why the majority of professionals (55%) are continuously looking for ways to reach out.?

The new “Meet the team” section on the job details page helps applicants do exactly that. It features both the job poster (e.g. the hiring manager or recruiter), as well as members of the hiring team that shared the job. In addition, it will show the mutual connections (including 2nd-degree connections) between the applicant and the hiring team, to help facilitate a productive conversation.?

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3. A more visually powerful way to share what you know

Professionals and brands are regularly looking for better, more powerful ways to talk about their knowledge and craft; from sharing industry insights, and professional tips and tricks, to offering step-by-step career advice and support. To do so, we see members use a mix of text, photo, and video formats to make their posts stand out. That’s why we’re excited to roll out a new type of format, called Carousels, to help professionals express themselves in a more visually compelling way.?

Carousels will empower members to create and share content best suited to educating and engaging their professional audience. It enables you to mix texts, images, and videos to reach your community in a visually engaging, swipeable, and digestible way. In addition, you’ll be able to add clickable links to content so that you can drive traffic to longer-form content. Thousands of creators across the globe, including a small set of Page admins have early access to help test and refine carousels. All members will have access to this new innovative format this Fall.

4. It’s never been easier to celebrate a colleague’s career and life milestones?

One of the best ways to nurture and stay connected to your professional community is by celebrating their career and life milestones. From job changes, to birthdays, to work anniversaries, these milestones are great opportunities to join their celebration and foster a stronger connection. To help members keep track of key milestones, we’re experimenting with a new, all-in-one experience that will surface all job changes, birthdays, and work anniversaries in one place, so you never miss out on an opportunity to reconnect and celebrate the people you care about.?

5.? Keeping your groups safe, trusted, and professionally relevant

We often hear from members how much they cherish their LinkedIn Groups experience. For millions of professionals around the world, groups are the go-to for advice, support, and industry tips on LinkedIn. Here are some recent examples:

• Looking to up your game in Java or Design? Join the Java Developers Community or User experience group, with over 350K members each. Want to sharpen your writing skills? Join the Advertising copywriting group (220K+ members) or join the Grammar Geeks group (over 32K members).???
• Looking to go remote but are not sure how? The Remote Workers group (80K+ members) and the Community for Digital Nomads group (3K+ members) bring together digital nomads and remote workers from around the world to share, discuss, and exchange ideas.?
• Want to learn what's the latest and freshest in the seafood business? Join the Seafood Community of over 15K buyers, sellers, brokers, and restaurant owners.?

One of the main ways to keep group communities flourishing is empowering group admins with tools to keep their groups safe, trusted, and professionally relevant. We’re making that easier with a couple of new changes:??

• Automated Welcome Messages - enable organizers to draft a personalized welcome note for new members on their first group visit. This will help new members feel welcomed, while also setting guidelines and norms on how to best contribute to the group.

• Criteria-based acceptance - help organizers save time and streamline acceptance based on meeting certain criteria.?

?Every day I’m amazed by the heart of the LinkedIn community and the incredible sense of purpose, passion, generosity, and humor that is showcased through conversations across the platform. I love seeing all the unique and inspiring posts－and I’m excited to share some of my favorites with you.??

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Caroline Dohrmann shares how LinkedIn was crucial in helping her quickly bounce back from a layoff. She writes, “On Tuesday, I lost my job because I was affected by the 10% #layoffs at #Shopify. On Wednesday, I posted about it and thanked my colleagues for the great time at the company. As of yesterday, I have 25 job offers in my inbox.”

Chris Do argues that we have 3 different inner beasts to fear: the Perfection Monster, the Advice Monster, and the Pleaser Monster

Nate Nasralla teaches how to build influence with a compelling narrative in this video.

Patreon Partner Manager, Dylan Harari , shares that Gen Z isn’t chasing likes, and their digital habits can be divided into two buckets: entertainment and communication.

Slack users, you might want to bookmark this for later: straight from Slack HQ, Claire Davies shares her best Slack hacks.?

With deep gratitude,

Tomer