Background: As a job seeker, I’ve applied to many positions that LinkedIn has shown me—but usually through a company’s website directly. Clearly, LinkedIn doesn’t know I’ve done that, but it would be really easy to allow me to tell LinkedIn.
Problem: Right now in LinkedIn, you can only “hide” jobs—by pressing the little X in the top right corner of the job tile, which means that LinkedIn doesn’t know WHY people are “hiding” jobs… Are users not interested? Have they applied some other way?
Recommendation: LinkedIn could offer another way for users to check off that they applied elsewhere, which would provide LinkedIn various pieces of useful information that could be used to help users, their own targeting, and the companies placing job descriptions.
Business Benefits for LinkedIn:
- Increased user relevance: LinkedIn will have a better idea of what jobs this person is interested in so as to improve tailoring of other recommendations and not have critical page real estate dedicated to jobs that the person has already applied to.
- Better analytics around what jobs are applied to through linked in vs. not.
- Improved knowledge about whether people who applied through LinkedIn are more likely to get/take a job than those who applied to a job another way.
- Better value proposition for the listing companies since LinkedIn will be showing more roles that the user has not applied for yet.
User Benefits: From the user’s point of view, this improvement can also reduce their concern over how LinkedIn interprets using the “X” to hide that job. Instead they get to feel more secure that they’re giving accurate information back that can help LinkedIn to know that job was definitely relevant—so relevant that they applied for it!
Example of how to improve the site to provide better information to LinkedIn
by 