Today on the Weekly Dose I take a look at some recent changes LinkedIn has made to their platform to make it easier for candidates. Here is the announcement from LinkedIn on two of the new enhancements that were made:

• How You Match on job postings shows members how they stack up to the experience needed for a role based on the skills on their profile and recruiters can save time when reviewing candidates by immediately seeing how an applicant fits a specific role, within LinkedIn’s job management page.

• 1-Click Apply gives job-seekers the option to save basic information, including a resume,  to apply for a job with a single click (desktop) or tap (mobile).

While these two features were made with candidates in mind, with record low unemployment in so many functions and markets, employers will also take advantages of these two additions.

LinkedIn has enormous amounts of data and the “How You Match” feature demonstrates a little psychology behind the data. On the surface, I think most TA pros would look at this and think “it won’t matter! Candidates don’t care if they match a job or not, they just apply, regardless.”

From a psychological standpoint, though, I think most employers will actually see an uptick in quality from this change. When LinkedIn’s matching technology tells you that you don’t match very well, most sensible people, won’t apply to that job.

When I first heard of the 1-Click Apply feature, I got scared that this was a recipe for mass applies from non-qualified candidates. That was my initial reaction, but I think LI brilliantly put these two features together to control this behavior.

Candidates want less friction when it comes to applying for jobs (that’s what Google’s data taught us with Google for Job’s algorithm). So, LinkedIn’s 1-Click Apply is the Holy Grail of an application process! We should all be striving to get to 1-Click Apply!

The truth is, in most ATS environments, today, it’s almost impossible to get to a one-click apply process, so kudos for LI for making this happen on their platform. While many will say they have one-click apply, most of those are based on you using your LI profile to make this happen, which usually takes an additional click or two.

The time is right for 1-Click Apply from an employer’s standpoint as well. Right now, most of us in TA are begging for more applications, so anything to make it easier for candidates to apply is welcome! The key is ensuring you get good quality with those additional applies, and I think LI did a good job trying to help out employers as well by launching the matching feature at the same time.

Acting like the candidate is the most important thing has become very vogue as of late for TA tech companies. Google started it with GFJ. Indeed is now trying to act like candidates matter, for the first time in their history. Now, LinkedIn joins the welcome wagon in letting candidates know they matter, and based on demographics and economic conditions, it looks like candidates will matter for a long while!

The Weekly Dose – is a weekly series here at The Project to educate and inform everyone who stops by on a daily/weekly basis on some great recruiting and sourcing technologies that are on the market.  None of the companies who I highlight are paying me for this promotion.  There are so many really cool things going on in the tech space and I wanted to educate myself and share what I find.  If you want to be on The Weekly Dose – just send me a note – timsackett@comcast.net

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