LinkedIn is constantly changing. It can be hard to keep up with the latest features and policy changes, so we’ve made it easy for you to stay up to date by creating a quarterly roundup of what’s new on this professional networking platform.

Over the past few months, LinkedIn has worked to make expanding your network offline easier than ever and has also improved its platform for job hunters and recruiters alike.

Read on for more noteworthy LinkedIn changes that happened from August to October 2019.

 

LinkedIn Events

According to LinkedIn’s research, people are twice as likely to accept connection requests from people they’ve met face-to-face. So, to help you meet other users in-person and take your professional networking to the next level, LinkedIn has introduced a new feature to its site: LinkedIn Events.

With LinkedIn Events, you can now create and join professional events. You can also:

• • Invite your connections
  • Manage your event
  • Converse with other attendees
  • Keep in touch after the event
  • Create private events
  • Use filters to find the right attendees
  • Track attendees and invites
  • Post updates
  • And more!

To create your own event, all you have to do is visit the Community panel on the left side of your news feed and click the +Create button. You can then create a description of your event, assign a date, time, and venue, and invite connections using filters like location, company, industry, and school. 

To keep your attendees updated with the latest news around your event, LinkedIn has also added an algorithm that “automatically provides timely and relevant notifications to attendees to make sure they don’t miss any important updates about your event.” 

If you’re not up to hosting your own professional event, no need to worry! You can find other users’ professional events to attend under your My Network tab.

 

Skills Showcase

LinkedIn has always been a platform where users can showcase their professional experience and skills. Now, users can back up just how great they are and prove their expertise with LinkedIn’s new Skills Showcase. 

This past quarter, LinkedIn launched LinkedIn Skill Assessment, a new way for users to validate their skills. Users can take assessments for various skills that have been created in partnership with LinkedIn Learning and subject matter experts. To pass, you must be in the 70th percentile or above, and only you will be able to see your results. If you don’t pass, you can keep your score private and try again at a later time. However, if you do pass, you will be awarded with a badge, which you can choose to display on your profile in LinkedIn Recruiter and LinkedIn Jobs. If you’ve passed an assessment for an in-demand skill, LinkedIn will additionally send you job recommendations as soon as they’re posted.

According to LinkedIn, making use of Skills Showcase can even help job seekers find a new position, as the platform has stated that “early results show candidates who complete LinkedIn Skill Assessments are significantly more likely (~30%) to get hired.” 

You can access assessments in the Skill section of your profile. Taking skill assessments will also unlock relevant LinkedIn Learning courses for free for a limited time to help you improve your skills. Assessments are currently available for skills like Adobe Photoshop, Java, Microsoft Excel, C++, and more.

 

Service Provider & Freelancer Search

Over the past few months, LinkedIn has made it easier for freelancers and those in need of a service to find one another on its platform. If you’re looking to hire a freelancer or service provider, you can now filter searches in the LinkedIn search bar by service providers, and LinkedIn will then provide you with a list of providers who have indicated that they are “open for business” and who fit your search criteria. 

You can also get recommendations from your network and the LinkedIn community for service professionals and freelancers by using the “find an expert” button in the share box when making a post. After sharing your post, your audience will then be able to comment directly on the post by tagging people, or they can share their recommendations with you through a private message.

 

LinkedIn Pages

This quarter, LinkedIn introduced new features to Pages to help companies make the most of their employees on the platform. Some of the new Pages features include:

• Employee Notifications
  • Page Admins can now alert employees about important posts on their company Page. This feature will encourage and make it easier for employees to engage with their company on the platform and to share company content with their network. However, to prevent overuse of the feature, LinkedIn has limited notifications to once every seven days
• Kudos and Team Moments
  • Page Admins now have a new custom content format called Kudos and Team Moments. This feature was built specifically “to welcome new team members, spotlight outstanding work, and recognize the people behind an organization’s pivotal moments.” Companies who use Kudos and Team moments may be perceived as more human and personable to prospective customers and employees. 
• Completion Meter
  • To make it easier for admins to maximize the effectiveness of their Page, there is now a new personalized completion meter on Pages. This meter identifies incomplete or missing fields and alerts admins to new features to encourage them to make their Pages as complete as possible.

 

LinkedIn Advertising

As usual, LinkedIn has continued to upgrade its targeting tools for advertisers. Over the past few months, LinkedIn introduced new features that are meant to “help marketers who are looking for more powerful reach and insights for their LinkedIn campaigns.”

Among some of the changes made is the improved campaign forecasting panel in Campaign Manager. Now you can see your target audiences’ make-up right from your dashboard. You can also customize the panel to “surface specific professional characteristics” for your audience, like top industries, years of experience, or company sizes. 

LinkedIn has also reported that the updated forecasting panel works with Matched Audiences to “not only [serve] ads to the specific prospects you’re trying to reach, but that you’ll have the demographic insights to deliver the content and creative mix that will resonate with them.” 

Another new feature for advertisers is boolean targeting. LinkedIn stated that using “And/Or” targeting allows advertisers to reach the right audience “through more sophisticated combinations of profile facets like job function, seniority, and titles” within a single campaign. Boolean targeting also provides advertisers with greater flexibility to determine who sees their ads. 

LinkedIn’s demographic reporting has also been improved and now allows advertisers to “understand which audiences are watching [their] video ads, filling out [their] Lead Gen Forms, and opening [their] Sponsored InMail messages.” This data gives advertisers a better understanding of the performance of their campaigns so they can make strategic adjustments to get better results from their ideal audiences.

 

That’s it for now! We’ll be back next quarter with more LinkedIn updates. In the meantime, you can find our full LinkedIn changes report for August through October 2019 on AdvisorU.