LinkedIn Are Making It Easier to See Which Job Opportunities Are Coming Your Way

LinkedIn

At its core, LinkedIn is still a job-hunting tool. They may have added a lot more strings to their bow recently, but if you surveyed the entire half-million strong user-base an asked them why they signed up, the most popular responses would undoubtedly be 'to look for a job' and 'to look for new staff'. Despite all the new bells and whistles, LinkedIn have never lost sight of that prerogative, something which is clearly demonstrated by their latest addition.

Now, when you view your profile, you can see a Search Appearances tracker which keeps track of how many times your profile has been discovered by people looking for new employees. For standard users, you can only see how many times you've been searched, but if you're a member, you can see which specific companies have been eyeing you up, then follow that to find job opportunities and/or contacts within said company.

Even without that, seeing how frequently you're being looked up can be a valuable resource, as it enables you to figure out which profile features stand out most to employers. Give it a few months, or even just a few weeks, and I'll bet any money that we'll be seeing a big influx of advice columns about LinkedIn profile editing based on information gleaned from this feature.

This isn't even the only recent addition which helps people track down work. Open Candidates, which came out late last year, enables people to notify recruiters that they're on the lookout for work, and a more rounded messaging service has been available to all members for several months now.

The nice thing about LinkedIn is that it's a playground for recruiters. The wide range of features means that there's no one approach to job hunting, and depending on what field you're in, there are a lot of different, creative ways to get yourself noticed. This addition not only capitalises on that, it enhances it.