LinkedIn — the Microsoft-owned social platform for those connecting for work or employment — is now 21 years old, an eternity in the world of technology. To stay on top of what the world of work is thinking these days, and to keep the nearly 1 billion users engaged on its platform, the company is today unveiling a series of new AI features covering its job search, marketing and sales products. It includes a major update to the Recruiter talent sourcing platform, with AI assistance built in throughout; AI-powered LinkedIn Learning coach; And a new AI-powered tool for marketing campaigns.
He told me that the social platform — which generated $15 billion in revenue last year — was slowly adding a number of AI-based features across its product suite. Among them, last March, AI-powered writing suggestions for those writing messages to other users on the platform debuted. Recruiters have also witnessed a A series of tests About AI-generated job descriptions and other features this year. This latest set of ads builds on that.
In some context, LinkedIn isn’t exactly new to the AI rodeo. It has actually been a heavy user of AI over the years. But until recently most of that was out of sight. Have you ever been surprised (or concerned) by the way the platform suggests connections to you that are oddly right up your street? This is artificial intelligence. All those insights LinkedIn generates about what its user base is doing and how it’s evolving? This is artificial intelligence too.
“In one way or another, AI powers everything at LinkedIn,” says chief engineer Deepak Agarwal He wrote back in 2018. (that it He is still in the company.)
What’s changed now is the world: AI has become a major concern, driven in large part by the progress of OpenAI and the development of services like ChatGPT, which allow ordinary people to get first-hand experience of how a computer brain is used to do work. Faster than they might have ever tried to do it themselves.
What’s also changed is that LinkedIn — which in the past built a lot of its own AI tools for all those back-end operations — is now leaning in. She confirmed to me that the company, which was acquired by Microsoft several years ago, is exploiting technology from OpenAI and Microsoft to power a number of its new features.
OpenAI, as you know, is now 49% owned by Microsoft, which made a major $13 billion investment in the company earlier this year. This was a very strategic stake, as Microsoft integrated a number of its own products with OpenAI technology. While VP of Engineering Eran Berger told me the company will continue to evaluate the technology it uses, and whether to build its own large language models and other AI products, for now LinkedIn will benefit from its parent company and the parent company’s major investment. .
Here’s a quick summary of everything new:
LinkedIn says Recruiter 2024 is a new hiring experience powered by artificial intelligence. It will use generative AI to help recruitment professionals come up with better search strings to surface stronger candidate lists. Specifically, as you’ve seen with searches like ChatGPT, recruiters will now be able to use more conversational language to hone in on who they’re hoping to find. It will also mean that search results will also contain more suggestions outside of what recruiters may think they are looking for.
LinkedIn Learning will incorporate artificial intelligence in the form of a “learning coach” that is essentially designed as a chatbot. Initially, the advice he will provide will be trained on suggestions and advice, and will be fixed in the soft skills camp. One example: “How can I delegate tasks and responsibilities effectively?” The trainer may suggest actual courses, but more importantly, he or she will also provide information and advice to users. LinkedIn itself has a huge catalog of educational videos, covering both those soft skills but also the actual technical skills and other knowledge needed for specific jobs. It would be interesting to see if LinkedIn provides a coach with coverage of this material as well.
Marketing will also get an AI boost, especially with a new product called Accelerate. While marketing and marketers are increasingly acquiring technical expertise, this is an interesting shift. The idea, again, will be to allow people to run campaigns on LinkedIn more easily to get around that heavy lifting. One drawback is that Accelerate is limited to campaigns and data from within LinkedIn’s walled garden. Since marketing campaigns typically span multiple platforms and audiences, users may find that the impact of the new tool is limited.
Finally, internal sales and selling to B2B audiences are also subject to AI processing. This is a fairly emerging area on LinkedIn, as salespeople focused on B2B selling leverage LinkedIn to find new clients or to connect more tightly with those already in their networks. The new AI feature will be a search function to help find those potential connections more easily and engage in conversations with those potential customers. Given that AI sales of this kind are well established in the world in general – I’ve even heard venture capitalists complain that they can’t think of “building another AI sales startup” – this seems to be somewhat overdue for an addition. LinkedIn.