LinkedIn and Microsoft Commit to Helping 250,000 Companies ...

LinkedIn and Microsoft Commit to Helping 250,000 Companies Hire for Skills Published on Mar 30, 2021

LinkedIn Corporate Communications

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Today, we are expanding the work of our global skills initiative with Microsoft to launch new resources that will help job seekers and employers move to a skills-based economy.

Since we launched our global skills initiative in June 2020, we've helped 30M people around the globe build digital skills for in-demand jobs. Today we are taking our commitment one step further with a new goal to help 250,000 companies make a skills-based hire in 2021 through our new and existing hiring products.

For more information on our vision for a skills-focused workforce and the resources that we're launching, please see the below:

Our CEO's publisher post on our vision for a skills-focused workforce.

Official Microsoft Blog for more information on the new resources from Microsoft and LinkedIn.

LinkedIn's Talent Solutions Blog for more information on our skills-based approach to opportunity.

New LinkedIn Profile tools to help members and job seekers stand out to opportunities

In addition, we're launching new LinkedIn Profile features to help our members better represent themselves in a more authentic way, and share their career goals and aspirations. A post on our LinkedIn blog today from our Chief Product Officer, Tomer Cohen, gives a full overview of this news.

Cover Story allows members to upload a short video to their Profile to bring to life their story. For job seekers, Cover Story is a great way to showcase their personality and demonstrate soft skills to recruiters and hiring managers.

Pronoun fields (optional) where members can add their gender pronouns and showcase their core identity at the top of their Profile.

Creator mode helps members who share content and insights on LinkedIn grow a following by more prominently displaying their content and adding hashtags about topics in their area of expertise.

Service Pages help freelancers looking to grow their business attract new clients by listing the services they offer, linked to their Profile.

Virtual job seeking in the age of COVID-19

To understand how the job seeking and hiring process has evolved since COVID-19, we conducted a survey* to job seekers and hiring managers in the U.S. Key findings include:

Authentic representation at work has become increasingly important

More than 50% (56%) of job seekers believe how they represent themselves at work has changed since COVID-19.

Almost 50% (46%) of respondents say they're more likely to be their authentic self in how they show up in the workplace vs. a year ago.

More than 50% (55%) of job seekers agree that gender is an important aspect of their identity, both in and out of the workplace, and 70% of job seekers believe it's important that recruiters and hiring managers know their gender pronoun.

More than 70% (72%) of hiring managers believe having clarity about a candidates self-identification (i.e. gender pronouns) is beneficial and helps others to be respectful of their identity.

Job seekers are seeking new ways to stand out; demonstrating soft skills is critical

Almost 80% (79%) of job seekers believe that as a result of COVID-19, the job search has become more competitive and they need to find new ways to stand out to recruiters.

Almost 80% (76%) of job seekers wish there was a better way to represent themselves to recruiters and hiring managers, and more than 70% (74%) believe it is important to highlight soft skills.

Almost 70% (69%) of hiring managers agree that soft skills are hard to assess in a job candidate, and 75% believe a standard resume is insufficient in evaluating a candidate's soft skills.

Video is a key channel for job seekers to stand out in the hiring process

Almost 80% (79%) of hiring managers believe that video has become more important when it comes to interacting with or vetting job candidates, and more than 60% (61%) of job seekers believe a recorded video could be the next iteration of the traditional cover letter.

More than 60% (62%) of job seekers believe sharing more about themselves, their experience and career goals on video could help them land a job. And hiring managers agree - almost 80% (76%) of hiring managers believe seeing a pre-recorded video of a job seeker would be useful.

59% of job seekers believe video is becoming the new norm as part of the job seeking process, and 41% have used video to stand out to recruiters and hiring managers.

Job seekers feel sharing a video with hiring managers would be helpful because it allows them to better highlight their personality (57%) and showcase their true self (41%).

For more resources and information for job seekers,visit opportunity.linkedin.com.

*Survey Methedology: Censuswide conducted research on behalf of LinkedIn, online between February 25 - March 2, 2021 among 1,009 Hiring Managers and 2,101 Job Seekers, ages 18-69, in the U.S.

LINK:	https://news.linkedin.com/2021/march/linkedin-and-microsoft-skills-com...
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