LinkedIn is the go-to hiring platform for countless businesses, freelancers, and talent scouts, yet its accessibility still leaves a lot to be desired. Fortunately, a new feature LinkedIn is testing may make the process of finding exactly what they need much easier (namely potential leads of yours).
LinkedIn’s interface has long resembled a modular résumé, including space for things like work experience, references, and testimonials from clients. While there isn’t anything overtly wrong with a traditional résumé, it does leave a few things to be desired — namely, that one must extrapolate meaning from a long list of often cryptic job listings and arbitrary, self-determined skills.
The solution to this potentially frustrating problem lies in LinkedIn’s new “Services Provided” section, which would feasibly allow LinkedIn users to list jobs or responsibilities for which their past experiences qualify them. Ideally, this would also let users postulate on their own experiences to form custom categories of services to fit specific job postings or fields.
Of course, regulating a user’s truthfulness and creativity when listing their services will be difficult, but no more so than gauging a potential hire’s “Skills” section during an actual interview. If anything, having the “Services Provided” section may even dissuade some users from cheating their own résumés in favor of fleshing out their existing skills on their profiles.
Not only does the “Services Provided” section make sense in the context of evaluating an applicant for a job, it also would round out the “Find a Service Provider” feature that LinkedIn has testing in the past—a connection discovered by Jane Manchun Wong. In theory, one could search for a service by name (or keyword) and delineate a search radius to find the best-qualified workers in their area, all the while refraining from combing through multiple different almost-qualified accounts.
LinkedIn is testing "Services" field in profile, which will pair well with
"Find a Service Provider": https://t.co/u1S7XESx4j pic.twitter.com/cCkE4Ud8C5
— Jane Manchun Wong (@wongmjane) April 25, 2019
Hiring is one of the most aggravating and FOMO-triggering processes one can undergo, and the stakes are incredibly high. Being able to glance at a candidate’s LinkedIn profile to see which services they feel ready to provide will give employers a huge amount of insight into both the candidate’s qualifications and their inherent self-confidence — all without spending more than a few seconds on their profile.
But most important for you, the reader, is that you have a more effective way to communicate your services rather than just simply cramming hundreds of acronyms you’ve earned or descriptions you’re hoping to convey in a tiny space in your profile. Could this eventually make LinkedIn an actual help for your lead generation toolbox? Maybe! Do you have this feature yet?
Jack Lloyd has a BA in Creative Writing from Forest Grove's Pacific University; he spends his writing days using his degree to pursue semicolons, freelance writing and editing, oxford commas, and enough coffee to kill a bear. His infatuation with rain is matched only by his dry sense of humor.
