Technically HR: LinkedIn goes all in on AI for its recruiting platform

For developers at LinkedIn, capitalizing on generative AI to improve the recruiting process is a no-brainer.

The professional networking site is launching new generative AI-powered features for both talent acquisition professionals on its recruiter platform and for users looking for work on its network.

“Gen AI is really good at being able to look through that data set pool and say, ‘Here’s some patterns’…and that opens up the possibilities that someone may have in their career,” said Hari Srinivasan, VP of product management, LinkedIn Talent Solutions. “In the same way, it opens up a series of candidates that a hirer may consider.”

In October, LinkedIn began rolling out its new Recruiter experience for 2024. A small number of recruiters on the platform are already piloting the new features, and the company plans to expand offerings to more customers throughout the year.

Using Recruiter, TA pros can use natural language when creating a hiring “project” on LinkedIn Recruiter with language specific to hiring goals.

“The majority of recruiters…typically did something with Boolean searches…and say, ‘I’m looking for someone from these companies and these fields and these titles,’ and from doing that, they would start producing a list of candidates,” Srinivasan said. “What you can do here is…a much more general, natural search.”

Srinivasan said as recruiters begin to populate the project, the generative AI adds associated skills that, perhaps, a TA pro might not know is associated with a role. LinkedIn leverages data from its Economic Graph data insights, to help inform the hiring project, he said.

“Because you started with a much wider term [and] you started with skills, the list of people you get may come from a much different set of backgrounds,” he said. “We’re trying to tell people there’s opportunities and people in places you may not have guessed.”

Zoom out. LinkedIn’s leveraging of generative AI to improve recruiting comes as Srinivasan said the company is working to address a common pain point in hiring: better matching candidates with the right skills to the skills needed for any given role.

The company last week announced a new generative AI-powered tool for its premium members that helps members understand the skills associated with their own jobs and those needed for open roles they may be interested in.

“I think generative AI was this big unlock for us in order to [deliver] against that vision of what we call skills-based hiring,” Srinivasan said. “For many, many years, people have learned the language of titles and degrees and some of these capabilities, and skills was a new language. When you’re talking in a new language, you have to have a way to naturally be able to do that, and what generative AI does really well is takes unstructured items and it makes it structured.”