Just when you think LinkedIn's thrown in all the generative AI elements it possibly can, it's just introduced another way of putting in automated assistance to its process.

Its newest AI update is a Hiring Assistant tool for recruiters. It'll allow HR managers to automatically generate a shortlist of LinkedIn users who look like a good fit for an advertised role.
That's right, you will no longer have to impress actual human recruiters to get an interview; instead, you will appeal to AI-based systems which will scan your profile and application data for relevant elements that will then see you recommended (or not) for the job.

It feels a bit worrying, and certainly gameable to some extent if you can work out what the system is looking for, like, if you can reverse-engineer it, by putting a job ad into your personal AI assistant, asking the AI what the important bits of a job advertisement actually are, that will also help you figure out the best way to optimize a profile for a certain kind of role.

But LinkedIn is confident that it has implemented enough safeguards to ensure the accuracy and quality of the automated recommendations.
According to LinkedIn:
 
"Based on your hiring goals, your assistant will automatically build a pipeline of qualified candidates for review, surface top applicants, draft outreach, and even answer basic questions about the role."

The new assistant on LinkedIn can also schedule interviews, take notes, and manage follow-up, so you can spend less time on admin, and more time on maximizing training and integration into the team.

Sounds pretty idealistic, but then again, given LinkedIn's massive database of professional insights, it probably does have the info to power such a tool.

It is the new version of LinkedIn's recruitment tools and an upgrade to its first AI hiring improvements announced in February. This new bot called Hiring Assistant integrates all other AI refinements within recruitment that LinkedIn has been refining into a single tool so that it can filter through candidates with ease to find the right people for any role.

But as has already been mentioned, I do have concerns about its susceptibility to fraud, and how that builds a more SEO-style approach to job hunting.
And yet, on the other hand, many recruitment offices already have arbitrary mechanisms by which to filter out their applications, and as such, this could indeed represent an improvement, even when it does feel slightly peculiar to be removing some elements of human evaluation from professional choices.

LinkedIn claims it is piloting Hiring Assistant with a small subset of LinkedIn customers starting this week, including AMD, Canva, Siemens, and Zurich Insurance. It will most likely expand this launch next year.