LinkedIn Utilizes Artificial Intelligence to Find Talent

LinkedIn: Stimulating Its Growth with Apps and AI

(Continued from Prior Part)

Talent Solutions segment revenues rose by 62%

LinkedIn (LNKD) helps companies find people with matching talents and skills within its network of 414 million unique visiting members, according to the recent quarter’s results. The company’s Talent Solutions segment comprises the Hiring and Learning & Development subsegments. Its revenues grew by 45% on a year-over-year (or YoY) basis and accounted for 62% of LinkedIn’s total revenues in the last quarter.

The company notes that its customer acquisition effort has remained strong, with “more than 3,000 new accounts added last quarter and ended the year with more than 42,000 under contract.”

Talent Solutions is the company’s most lucrative product line, as talent recruiters are the largest group of paying users. During the last quarter, LinkedIn announced the expansion of Talent Solutions by introducing its Referrals feature.

LinkedIn also redesigned its existing Recruiter platform, utilizing on a new algorithm. Both products are focused on leveraging the existing data available on its portal to narrow the focus in its talent search, rather than mining the entire Internet.

Recruiter

LinkedIn plans to make use of artificial intelligence (or AI) that brings intuitive and predictive elements to its Recruiter service. The redesigned platform will allow recruiters find new candidates by considering existing employees’ profiles as a benchmark.

To redesign this platform, the company leveraged its portfolio of acquired firms. In 2014, LinkedIn acquired Bright.com, a job search startup. In 2015, LinkedIn bought Careerify, which is primarily engaged in the development of employee referral software.

Referrals

On the other hand, the Referrals feature will integrate with the company’s applicant tracking system (or ATS) to list all the current job openings and to suggest potential hires. The objective is not only to keep the hiring managers in the loop, but also to engage the employees who are searching for opportunities that match their experience and skills. The LinkedIn’s Referrals feature has a learning algorithm that integrates new information as it becomes available.

For instance, if the candidate is a novice or is planning to switch from a particular sector, the algorithm can adapt accordingly in order to refine and improve its recommendations. IBM’s (IBM) Watson and Google’s (GOOG) Google Alpha is engaged in the development of AI, which has beaten its human opponents on Jeopardy and in Google’s Go Championship.

Facebook (FB) constitutes 4.3% of the PowerShares QQQ ETF (QQQ).

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Browse this series on Market Realist:

• Part 1 - LinkedIn’s Efforts to Introduce New Features to Its Product Line

• Part 2 - LinkedIn Streamlines the Process of Targeting Ads and Campaigns

• Part 4 - How the Acquisition of Connectifier Could Benefit LinkedIn