LinkedIn has unveiled a new search platform that opens up more ways to find people across the social network. Most of the new features add to the convenience of searching.
For example, they eliminated the need to switch tabs if you want to see results with professionals from outside your network. Results will now consist of supposedly the most relevant results from all of LinkedIn. Results now also have action links right in them so you can send an “InMail,” “Get introduced,” or add them to your network right from the search results page. LinkedIn Senior Product Manager Esteban Kozak goes over some of the new features in the following video:
Searching with LinkedIn is now also more personalized. “One of the most important factors in ranking search results is the searcher’s network. This means that every matching search result is evaluated based on who is executing the search,” says Kozak. “The end result is a personalized relevance algorithm that places the professionals that are most likely to be of interest at the top of the first search results page.”
In addition to the above attributes, LinkedIn has come up with some productivity tools based on data obtained from over a billion search queries. The “In Common” feature for example, is a field in the search results that lets you find connections shared by you and other selected users (see image below).
You can save searches (as illustrated) and receive reminders by email when someone new meets your search criteria.
“One of the search engine’s most powerful new additions is persistent search, which allows users to effectively set up alerts notifying them when there is an addition to a company’s executive roster, or when an appealing job candidate is up for grabs (the feature will likely be a boon for headhunters),” says Jason Kinkaid at TechCrunch. “Before now there have been a few ways to create similar notifications (like Yotify, which we covered in September), but this is the first time that LinkedIn has integrated this functionality.”
Kozakdiscusses even more features on the LinkedIn blog, and you can explore the new platform yourself by going here. They might not all be in place yet though. Kozak notes that features will be rolled out over the next few days.
