Amid rapidly shifting economic conditions, LinkedIn has this week launched a new initiative aimed at helping job seekers identify key skills in demand, and apply for roles, in order to get more people back into work after recent layoffs and changes.
As explained by LinkedIn:
“[We’re] excited to launch a global skills initiative aimed at bringing more digital skills to 25 million people worldwide by the end of this year. Our goal is to help those who have become unemployed due to the COVID-19 pandemic and resulting economic crisis get the skills they need to land their next job. By giving free access to the skills and training that job seekers need to get jobs, we hope to do our part and help connect job seekers around the globe to new opportunities.”
To facilitate this, LinkedIn has launched a new mini-site to help guide people through the process.
The system, as per LinkedIn, uses a three-step process to help connect users to relevant roles:
Click on the first step and you’re taken through to a listing of the most in-demand skills, based on insights from LinkedIn’s network (690M members, 50M companies, 11M job listings).
Tap on any of these, and you can undertake free LinkedIn learning courses to up your skills.
“We’re making the 10 LinkedIn Learning Paths aligned with these jobs available for everyone for free. Each learning path includes a sequence of video content aimed at helping individuals broadly develop the core skills needed for a given role.”
That’s a significant offering – and in addition to this, Microsoft Learn and GitHub are also partnering with LinkedIn to provide advanced course material in technically advanced areas.
These come in addition to the various other LinkedIn Learning courses that have already been made available to assist those dealing with the impacts of COVID-19, while LinkedIn also recently made its diversity-related courses available for free too, in order to help advance the #BlackLivesMatter movement.
That’s a lot of free education to consider – and again, the skills identified are based on what’s in demand, which provides a whole range of potential opportunities for all users via this new program.
In addition to this, LinkedIn is also providing additional labor market insights, via its Economic Graph, available in a new interactive platform.
The data reports provide more in-depth overviews of the current economic climate, in various regions, including in-demand skills, hiring trends, location data, etc.
There’s a heap to take in, both for job seekers and recruiters – and even analysts looking to get a better understanding of workplace shifts. If you’re looking for ways to skill up, or know people who are, then these new tools are definitely worth a look.
