Supporting the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic

Everyday we’re hearing heroic stories of how people on the front lines of the COVID-19 pandemic are working around the clock to protect the public. Local heroes, including doctors, nurses and medical staff, first-responders, supermarket and warehouse workers, and delivery drivers, are going above and beyond to provide essential services. It’s clear, however, that more help is needed.

New data from LinkedIn shows that for the first three months of 2020, job postings in the UK healthcare sector overall are up 15%, compared to the same period last year. Furthermore, job postings for front line healthcare industries, including medical practice and hospital & healthcare, are up 38% year-over-year for the same period, as the response to the pandemic surges. 

As the world’s largest online professional network, we believe we can do more to help connect essential businesses that have urgent hiring needs with people that have the skills to help. To continue playing our part in the fight against COVID-19, LinkedIn is offering free hiring resources to critical industries that need to fill the most urgent roles as quickly as possible.  

From today, we’re bolstering existing response efforts by:

• Accelerating hiring of critical roles: LinkedIn is offering companies and organisations in healthcare (including hospitals, medical device, medical practice and mental health care), supermarkets, warehousing and package delivery, as well as disaster relief nonprofits, the ability to post new mission critical jobs for free on our platform (from 1 April to 30 June) to find and hire people with the skills most needed. 
• Connecting medical professionals to urgent healthcare roles: We’re also helping job seekers with the right skills to quickly find these open roles by promoting them on our Jobs page. For instance, front line healthcare roles, such as doctors and nurses, will be automatically added to a list of ‘urgent’ jobs, which will be surfaced to members with relevant skills. Members that have skills that fit these open roles will receive automatic real-time alerts and emails that inform them so that they can apply immediately.
• Mobilising LinkedIn’s own recruiters to help fill urgent roles: To help healthcare organisations and disaster relief nonprofits who are managing the secondary effects of coronavirus, such as unemployment, childcare, and mental health issues, we’re offering support through our Recruiting For Good program where LinkedIn employees with recruiting expertise can volunteer their time to help organisations find talent to fill urgent paid and volunteer positions. 
• Supporting our healthcare staffing customers with free insights: We’ve also heard from our healthcare staffing customers that they need help hiring for critical healthcare roles. To support their surge hiring needs, LinkedIn is offering access to LinkedIn Talent Insights for three months to give our customers the tools to identify critical healthcare professionals efficiently with access to real-time data and insights.
• Providing content and resources to help businesses stay informed: LinkedIn has also launched a new Navigating Coronavirus microsite that will be updated regularly to help people stay informed and connected. 

In addition to these efforts, our editorial team continues to work with governments and official sources to highlight calls for volunteers and how businesses can best support. 

This is a challenging time for many and we hope these measures bring some relief to those on the front lines. We’re continuing to identify new ways to support the fight against this global pandemic and will continue to keep you posted.