With the success of my co-founder’s side project, JobChangeNotifier, I’ve been wondering what else LinkedIn could be doing better. As a heavy LinkedIn user, I’m surprised when I hear how little others use LinkedIn or how little value they see in it beyond being a repository of resumes. I think part of the issue is the presentation of information by LinkedIn.  Here are some ideas about how to increase engagement and usefulness:

Broaden utility beyond recruitment

JobChangeNotifier made LinkedIn more useful for non-recruitment purposes like business development and reporting. You could now find new potential deal champions thanks to job changes or you could find potential news on industry personnel movements. Distilling all the activity on the site down to a simple email update made the information easily accessible rather than indecipherable in its current form wrapped around other LinkedIn updates. Perhaps the lesson may be even to break down the emails from Linked to specific new updates to increase depth/value rather than doing a general roundup which gets ignored by most people.

Highlight profile visits

An often overlooked feature of LinkedIn is “Who’s Viewed Your Profile?” An interesting example to learn from is OKCupid which makes online dating a crack addiction with its constant teasing. It will send you an email telling you who is currently viewing your profile now. 

I imagine LinkedIn could easily boast engagement if it made a similar email go out at least once in the user’s lifetime. It probably could get more people to shell out for a paid account that limits others ability to see who they are viewing while seeing who has viewed their page.

Improve company information

LinkedIn may have an incredible wealth of information on employees but it has a shockingly little amount of data on the employers that isn’t self-reported. I’d find it a lot more helpful if it was able to add information that could be later further refined by users.

Suggest users to meet

The most obvious high-value service that LinkedIn should provide is a recommendation engine for networking. Right now it simply tells you people you might know in order to increase your network based on your real-life, offline network. However, I think a lot of users could use a way to be connected with others interested in meeting professionals interested in the same industry, careers, or companies.

OKCupid also has a service called “Quiver” which is basically an automatically refreshed recommendation of 3 users it believes you’d be compatible with based on your information. OKCupid will actually email you these suggestions which you can decline or visit their profile (which may then trigger an email to them saying you are looking at their profile).

Final Thoughts

I think LinkedIn is a powerful tool already but most people don’t realize it or can’t extract enough value from it. There are probably so many more directions they could take the service and of course with such a large user base, it has to seriously consider how each change may affect long-term retention for its core business of providing recruitment matching. I suspect as LinkedIn grows though, it will want to expand its services and be the source for your professional life.