LinkedIn Introduces AI-Powered Assistant for Recruitment Ads

When LinkedIn started distributing “AI-powered conversation starters” in people’s news feeds earlier this month to increase engagement on its platform, the action generated some engagement of its own, none of it particularly favorable.

The fact is, however, that LinkedIn has been heavily utilizing AI and other forms of automation across a variety of its platform-related functions for years—most notably in the background with regard to how it develops and manages its network.

It appears that OpenAI is now playing a bigger role in LinkedIn’s front-end strategy as well, with the latest developments occurring today in the areas of LinkedIn profiles, recruitment, and LinkedIn Learning. This is because its owner Microsoft has gone all-in on OpenAI.

The company is offering AI-powered writing ideas today to help consumers enhance their LinkedIn profiles and recruiters create job descriptions.

According to Tomer Cohen, chief product officer of LinkedIn, both are constructed using cutting-edge GPT models. GPT-4 is the format used by LinkedIn for customized profiles, and GPT-3.5 is used for job descriptions.

Also, the business is putting a greater emphasis on AI in LinkedIn Learning, gathering 100 courses on the topic and adding 20 more that are solely dedicated to generative AI.

The profile writing prompts generated by AI are meant to help those who find it difficult to put their best selves in words, but who can at least identify a few of their accomplishments, which the AI will then turn into a more engaging story.

Initially, they are only available to paying Premium users.

In your About and Headline sections, the app “identifies the most significant qualities and experiences to highlight, and crafts ideas to make your profile stand out,” the company claims.

The tool saves time and effort by doing labor-intensive tasks while preserving your voice and style. The suggested content is urged to be “reviewed and edited” before being added to your profile.

The job descriptions, however, will operate according to a similar premise: A recruiter lists some essential details like the job title and employer.

Following that, “our technology will generate a proposed job description for you to evaluate and alter, saving you time and effort while still offering you the flexibility to tailor the post to your needs,” explains Cohen in a blog post.

You can direct your energy towards more strategic areas of your career by streamlining this part of the hiring process.

While these are intended to save users time and encourage them to keep their profiles more up-to-date, or to promote more recruiting business by making it simpler to create those job profiles, I can think of at least one reason why this might not be the best solution.

If your goal in creating a profile is to learn more about the person you might be working with or networking with, then employing AI to generate those descriptors will take you further away from that goal.

In the end, that may lead to more rather than a less wasted time for recruiters and other possible connections who are looking at a profile.

That would be less the case for job adverts, which are already feeling relatively anodyne and frequently fail to provide anyone a clear notion of what may be expected in a specific post, let alone what it would be like to work at a specific organization.

Overall, the introduction of these technologies highlights how, while AI may be a useful tool, its widespread use is not always beneficial.

A spokesman for LinkedIn emphasized that “this is just the beginning” and promised that the firm would “continue to employ generative AI to explore new ways to deliver value to our members and customers.”