LinkedIn has announced a series of new features with which users can update their profiles to make them stand out. These include adding an introductory video, a creator mode to show your expertise, optional pronoun fields and pages for freelancers to list the services they offer.
LinkedIn also published the results of their survey to discover how job seeking and recruitment has evolved in the age of COVID and the new features dovetail with these findings.
The survey showed that both job seekers and recruiters attached high levels of importance to:
- using video as a key medium in the job seeking process
- finding better ways to highlight soft skills
- authentic representation at work
Video Cover Story
According to LinkedIn's survey, 61% of job seekers believe video could be the next iteration of the traditional cover letter, and 76% of managers think seeing a pre-recorded video of an applicant would be useful.
The new Cover Story feature allows you to upload a brief video to your profile, enabling you make a personalised first impression and show your communication skills.
“For job seekers, Cover Story is a great way to showcase their personality and demonstrate soft skills to recruiters and hiring managers.“
Once you’ve added a Cover Story an orange ring appears around your profile photo and a preview of your video auto-plays silently within the photo frame. Captioning is in the pipeline.
Creator mode
Creator mode lets you display and showcase your content more prominently. You can add hashtags to indicate the topics you post about most, showing your areas of expertise.
If you activate creator mode, your Featured and Activity sections are moved to a more prominent position at the top of your profile, and the “Connect” button is changed to “Follow”, to help you build a following.
If you do live broadcasting on LinkedIn your profile background will now show your live broadcast when you start streaming, helping to increase the visibility of your content.
Gender pronouns
55% of job seekers agree that gender is an important aspect of their identity, both in and out of the workplace, and 72% of hiring managers believe clarity about someone’s self-identification is beneficial and helps others to be respectful of their identity.
LinkedIn users will now be able to add their preferred gender pronouns, with new optional pronoun fields at the top of profiles.
Service pages
Freelancers will be able to create a dedicated service page from their profile, providing a list of the services they offer to potential new clients.
With 79% of jobseekers saying the process has become more competitive as a result of COVID, people are looking for new ways to stand out to recruiters. LinkedIn’s new features, which have started rolling out globally, provide opportunities to do just that.
