Technically HR: New LinkedIn tools aim to connect internal candidates to roles and the tools to design their own careers

The introduction of generative AI has already altered the workplace and in some cases necessitated changes to talent strategy as HR and talent leaders look for ways to hire and retain a skilled workforce.

On March 6, LinkedIn launched new career development and internal mobility features aimed at helping current employees and talent pros better connect about opportunities within their organization and design upskilling paths for employees to get there.

“The skills needed to do our jobs are changing, and they’re changing at such a rapid clip,” said Jill Raines, LinkedIn's director of product management and head of LinkedIn Learning. “Even when we’re not changing jobs, what’s expected of us in those jobs is going to change and is already changing, and generative AI is only accelerating this.”

Raines told HR Brew that LinkedIn’s newest features are designed to help employees level up internally, instead of moving to a new gig, allowing employers to retain and grow talent.

“As that rapid skill evolution plays out, what’s happening is companies can’t keep pace there, and they’re underutilizing top talent,” Raines said. “Employees have this inability to connect the dots to the next thing. They don’t see a path to growth, so…they exit.”

LinkedIn found that nearly 85% of hiring managers say empowering employees to explore new internal career opportunities is the best way to retain them, but only one in five employees have strong confidence in their ability to make an internal job change, according to LinkedIn’s Workplace Learning report, released today.

“Talent leaders are being tasked to solve something extremely challenging, and the solutions at their fingertips are not making that house any easier,” Raines said.

To address the disconnect, LinkedIn is launching Next Role Explorer, a tool for employees to see how colleagues with similar job titles have moved around their company. The tool also suggests learning courses based on their current skills and career goals.

“The most effective approach to skill-building at a company is to take a bottoms up approach, to tie learning to individuals career motivations, and we’re seeing that play out in the product already,” Raines said.

TA pros are very familiar with LinkedIn’s famous “open for work” filter, but now the platform has designed a way for employees to signal to internal talent pros that they’re ready for a change in-house. TA pros on LinkedIn Recruiting will be alerted of their interest, and new company job listings will also be directed to these users.

Raines said HR pros too often learn of a talent-role match between an exiting employee and the company when it’s too late. She hopes this new feature helps connect the dots between the employee and talent teams and make it just as easy to look internally for a new job as it is to find one externally.

Zoom out. Talent professionals are sitting on the cusp of what HR analyst Josh Bersin described as the “post-industrial era,” an economy with a persistently tighter labor market, a stronger emphasis on skills, and the rapid expansion of technology like AI.

To meet the moment, talent professionals and employees need to better understand the skills needed to perform roles, but with a tighter labor market, talent pros and their bosses in the C-suite are placing a greater emphasis on the connection between upskilling and retention, Raines said.

LinkedIn’s latest products demonstrate the platform’s ongoing efforts to connect its learning and upskilling product with its talent and jobs product, because “it can’t just end at upskilling,” Raines said.

“Being able to hire on roles is going to break down for companies, and they’re not able to be agile and find success,” she said. “What we’re aiming to solve is…break[ing] down the DNA of a role into a set of skills and give people an upskilling path aligned to those skills, making them agile to fit roles as they shift and evolve.”