By Doug Ellinger

When gearing up to make a career switch, one of the first things many job seekers do is check their LinkedIn profiles and make sure they’re up to date.  Candidates might make some updates, such as changing their photo, beefing up their skills section, begging a friend or colleague for a job recommendation, adding some new colleagues to their Connections lists, or even approving some long-distant Connection requests that have been sitting in their inboxes for months (though this doesn’t necessarily help!).  We all know the drill - it is important to maintain a professional profile that is polished, especially when searching for a new job.  

One-Click Application 

Wouldn’t it be nice if all of the time spent by candidates updating their LinkedIn profiles didn’t have to be duplicated for the résumé updating process?  In other words, what if a job seeker could easily apply for a job by submitting their LinkedIn profile instead of a résumé?  Today, LinkedIn announced the introduction of a nifty new feature, ‘Apply With LinkedIn,’ that lets job seekers do just that (learn how it works here).  

Sure, a résumé may still be required by the hiring company during the interview process, but it seems that being able to Apply With LinkedIn will potentially cut out a lot of early ‘get to know you’ time between candidates and recruiters.  Now, when a recruiter receives a LinkedIn application, s/he can immediately check out the prospect and determine if there might be a good fit for the position available. 

Social Recruiting Made Easy 

Apply With LinkedIn should be good news for recruiters, right?  It certainly seems like it will facilitate a quicker, more informative way in which recruiters can learn about candidates.  The question is, will it lead to more meaningful and productive connections?  I definitely think so, especially if more qualified, gainfully employed candidates are encouraged to test the waters and begin exploring new job opportunities.

For me, though, the bigger story here is that the social recruiting space is continuing to evolve faster than most recruiters – and job seekers – can keep up.  News of major developments from names like Google (Google+ is buzzing) and LinkedIn can be easy to get excited about, but are all of these new platforms, tools, plug-ins, and widgets all that easy to understand?  It takes a commitment to test out new technologies and some of these commitments can take a good deal of time.  The last time I checked, recruiters don’t have a lot of free time on their hands!

So, let Bullhorn Reach take care of figuring out what works and what doesn’t.  Our product experts are continuously evaluating new social media and networking tools to determine which ones will most effectively help recruiters find the best talent.  Once we find something we like, we add it….quickly!  This is why we are so excited to be among the very first recruiting platforms to introduce Apply With LinkedIn (as of this morning, all jobs on Bullhorn Reach include this feature). 

If you already have a Bullhorn Reach account, check out the new Apply With LinkedIn feature today.  If you don’t have an account, give us a try…it’s FREE.

Please let us know what you think.

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