LinkedIn Launches New Freelancer Connection Tools to Lean into the Rising Gig Economy

LinkedIn’s looking to facilitate more opportunities for freelancers with the expansion of its Services Marketplace, which essentially builds upon its ‘Services’ listings for profiles, designed to better enable brands and freelancers to connect.

LinkedIn launched an initial beta test of its Services Marketplace back in February, and it’s since grown to 2 million users in the test pool. Now, LinkedIn will expand the options globally, providing more ways to facilitate freelancer discovery and connection, and maximize opportunity.

As you can see in the above images, with LinkedIn’s latest additions, users that add a Services listing to their profile can now benefit from advanced discovery, with new recommendation tools, search filters and more that will help business owners hone in on what they need from freelance providers.

LinkedIn’s also streamlined its freelancer connection process by making it so that once somebody discovers your service page, they can immediately send a request for services without needing to connect or follow you.

Which is a significant improvement, that will essentially open up its freelance listings to a much broader audience, and facilitate more connection via the tool.

In addition to this, LinkedIn’s also added a new dashboard for service providers to help them keep tabs on their various queries and requests:

“When you create a service page, you’ll now have a dashboard to manage project requests and messages all right from LinkedIn. No need to manage different communication channels. And, we’ll send you notifications if new requests or messages come in.”

The new dashboard will also include a ‘Reviews status’ element, where users will be able to manage the client reviews that are featured on their services page. 

The update is one of several new job connection features announced by LinkedIn, which is also looking to facilitate more flexible work settings in job queries, via new ‘Remote’, ‘Hybrid’ and ‘On-site’ filters within the its Job Search and Open to Work features, while it’s also adding new company page summaries for job seekers to provide more insight into workforce policies (including vaccination requirements and other return to office information).

Amid evolving regulations around COVID restrictions, and the gradual shift back to the office, the new filters will make it easier to communicate personal preferences, while also understanding the specific requirements of each workplace.

And LinkedIn clearly stands to benefit from the building economic recovery. In another post on the LinkedIn Engineering blog, the platform reports that:

“Job transitions are up 50% year over year, and as more candidates are looking for new positions, we’re seeing a record-setting number of open jobs on LinkedIn. Remote jobs are also becoming more prevalent, with 1 in 8 U.S. jobs on LinkedIn now being remote, an increase over the previous ratio of 1 in 67 seen in March 2020.”

That’s a lot of activity, and a lot of change within the broader workforce, which LinkedIn is looking to tap into with these new updates, in order to cater to as many opportunities as it can.

Furthering this, LinkedIn’s also looking to provide more guidance for job seekers via a career summit on October 27th, in which LinkedIn Learning instructors will outline tips and approaches for career transformation.

“The Career Summit brings together career experts for a day of recommitment to the thing that’s going to get us to where we want to go – learning new skills. With events ranging from managing your career with purpose to developing a side hustle, you can attend them all, or pick and choose the ones that are most relevant to you. Join live and bring your questions, or watch afterwards at your convenience.”

Given the breadth of career change happening, it makes sense for LinkedIn to tap into these shifts, as it looks to maximize opportunity, and connect more users to the careers that best suit their interests.

Original Article: https://www.socialmediatoday.com/news/linkedin-launches-new-freelancer-connection-tools-to-lean-into-the-rising-g/609016/