In the wake of the Covid-19 epidemic, the employment market has undergone a major shift. Many people are finding it harder to find a job, fill a position, or develop professionally. It's not surprising that companies who have developed business models in these areas are changing: LinkedIn, Microsofts social network platform for the working world, today announced a series of new developments that aim to keep up with the times.
It is launching a Learning Hub that will allow organizations to offer professional development and training to their employees. LinkedIn members can access 40 free courses to help them adapt to hybrid work, be better managers in the new norm, and return to the office. These courses will also address how to run facilities that are not limited to a single building. It is also changing the details people can use for job searches to accommodate these types of working conditions.
The Learning Hub was launched in limited beta in April this year. The Hub will be rolled out in greater numbers today as part of an event hosted by Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO, and Ryan Roslansky, CEO of LinkedIn.
LinkedIn is a long-standing company that focuses on education. Its acquisitions such as Lynda in 2015 have helped to strengthen its education strategy and position itself as the go-to platform to professional development. Partnerships to bring in substantial amounts of content from third-parties (for example, in 2018, Lynda added 13,000 courses via third-party providers); and efforts to link the concepts of skill development and professional profiles, research, and the creation of interactive tools for its users.
The courses, which are free to use until October 9, are timely and will help companies make or think about the transition from remote to office environments. However, The Learning Hub is a larger product launch that is more charitable. It will be available as a premium service to existing LinkedIn Learning Pro users. They can use it free of charge until July 2022 and possibly longer. It is a significant business. However, it is connected to the company's larger efforts to attract more business-focused services and more engagement from HR departments to boost one of its main revenue drivers, recruiting.
LinkedIn's relaunch as a learning platform (often called LXPs) will place it in direct competition with other learning platforms such as 360Learning, Coursera for Business and Cornerstone. This platform allows organizations to manage their professional training content through in-house or third-party channels. LinkedIn claims it will also use its data on employee trends and AI to personalize content for users and organizations. However, the fact that HR teams can also post jobs and source candidates on LinkedIn makes it a more stickier experience and may feel more cohesive in a time where so many other platforms might seem more scattered.
LinkedIn's new fields are notable. This will allow recruiters to indicate whether the job is onsite, remote or hybrid. Soon, those searching for new jobs will be able indicate which of these they are looking for in a new position. It will allow companies to provide more information about their company status, such as vaccination requirements, to let the rest of the world (employees and partners, customers, and others) know if your physical offices are available for business.
Although these new fields might sound trivial or not directly related to the concerns and situations we face today, I believe they are much more important than that. These new fields reflect what LinkedIn believes (and what many of you feel) to be strong priorities in our current view of jobs. This opens up the possibility that LinkedIn may consider other types of information in personal and company profiles as well as details that could be used for recruitment. The company has been working on this issue for some time. In June, it allowed users to add pronouns in their profiles. This is a huge step forward, given the number of smaller companies that are trying to take LinkedIn down. LinkedIn is constantly changing formats and sunsetting others as it tries to adapt to the market.
