LinkedIn turns your phone into a job-hunting machine

LinkedIn used to offer a pretty passive experience: Put your resume on the professional social networking site and hope it catches a recruiter’s eye. But LinkedIn isn’t resting on its laurels, especially when it comes to mobile–the network is making the job-hunting experience a little less stressful with a new update for iOS and Android to let you fill out job applications on the go.

The professional social network’s latest update for iOS and Android lets you apply for jobs straight from the LinkedIn app.

LinkedIn overhauled its mobile apps in April and made it easier to search for jobs in July, but you couldn’t submit any in-app resumes.
“Our ‘Jobs you may be interested in’ feature has been a huge hit with job hunters and even professionals who may not be looking,”

LinkedIn associate product manager Vaibhav Goel wrote in a Monday blog post. “As a result of our highly personalised job recommendations in the mobile feed, we’re seeing members who never view jobs on the desktop, viewing and saving jobs on mobile.”

To capitalize on that growth, the network decided to add a mobile feature that lets you apply for jobs with your LinkedIn profile.
You can search for specific jobs in the app–just click on the Jobs tab and type in the position or title you’re looking for–then pick an open gig you want to apply for. If the company lets users apply with LinkedIn profiles (and many do), then you can edit your profile with any additional information and submit it. If the company doesn’t let applicants submit their profiles, then LinkedIn will take you the external application site within the app.

The application feature has long been available for LinkedIn’s desktop users, but now more than 30 percent of the network’s 225 million users surf the site on their smartphones. LinkedIn is doubling down on mobile growth with better search results and more content, so it makes sense to add a job application feature. It rolls out in an update for iOS and Android on Monday to English-speaking users.