Job Seekers and Companies on LinkedIn Can Now Instantly See If an Applicant Is a Match for a Role

When a job seeker sees your job post on LinkedIn, there’s one key piece of information they want to know: are they a fit? However, knowing how they match up to your role just by reviewing the description takes time and isn’t always easy. Our research shows that candidates are often not sure what are the absolute must-have qualifications in order to apply and sometimes this turns great prospects away from your jobs.

This is the exact problem that LinkedIn’s new How You Match feature hopes to solve. A job seeker who views a job post on LinkedIn will see real-time analysis based on their LinkedIn profile, showing them which requirements they meet, and where there are gaps. Candidates who are a strong match to the requirements can move forward with confidence. If there are important gaps, candidates can easily update their profile to capture their relevant experience or skills, or continue looking for a better fit.

Enabling candidates to self-select based on real-time analysis of their fit means that recruiters will see a stronger set of applicants. But even better, this same matching technology is also available in your LinkedIn job management page to make it easier for you to review candidates—without having to click and read through every profile and resume to find out more.

Here’s how it works:

Job seekers who view your job post can quickly assess how well they match

How You Match is the checklist you see displayed on the right of the job description in the below photo, revealing how factors like the job applicant’s education level, skills, years of experience, and current job title match with what you’re looking for in a potential new hire.

This gives qualified candidates extra encouragement to apply for roles in which they’ll thrive. It also gives candidates who may not have the right experience a more clear picture of where they stand before they decide whether or not to apply.

Once a candidate determines they’re a good fit, LinkedIn’s 1-Click Apply button on mobile and desktop, allows them to save basic information and their resume to apply for a job with a single click or tap. This makes it very easy to apply—especially on mobile.

Once candidates apply, you can quickly review and determine if they are a fit

This match criteria isn’t just displayed for job seekers. You’ll also be able to take advantage of it when you post a job on LinkedIn through the LinkedIn job management page.

When you open the list of job applicants, now you can quickly see which core requirements each candidate meets. To do that, hover over the “View Match Criteria” option in the “Applicants” tab on the LinkedIn Job management page and the checklist will show up:

This feature allows you to quickly analyze how good a fit each candidate is, which helps save you time—especially for high volume job postings.

How You Match criteria is automatically pulled from each job description, so you don’t have to worry about creating this checklist yourself. The criteria you see is identical to what the candidate sees, helping keep everyone on the same page.

If you want to manually edit this criteria, you can do that through the job posting flow or in edit mode in job management. Your criteria match checklist will automatically update to reflect your changes.

When you can start using this feature

The recruiter view of "How you Match" will be rolling out in the next few months as a free upgrade for Job Slots. Your potential candidates will also see the new How You Match feature on LinkedIn for any job post where the poster has specified the targeting criteria.

To find out more about new innovations from LinkedIn, explore our Product Updates page.

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