Perfect feature that LinkedIn should've developed themselves. Thank you for this!
There's sites where you can pay for referrals or ask for them for free on Blind though. Most people accept randos on LinkedIn, so unsure how many refer you. The only people who've referred me on Linkedin are my previous co-workers.
Caveat: I know people that don't use LinkedIn, but will "keep a profile" for reputational reasons.
What happens with the personal data that gets uploaded? Is the payload stored or used for any other purposes? Is there a privacy policy?
The next best thing would be to have an overlay that allows you to pinpoint where and how you made a connection
Remember Blind? This is like Blind+++
I really want the inverse of this.
I even wrote a version of it, but like many side projects; I lost motivation after leaving the original company I was working at (where I was integrating with things).
I really want a way of recommending people you've worked with previously; should they happen to apply to your current workplace.
I've worked with some absolute stars and would gladly work with them again.
My original design (that I even got working) had two ways of "recommending" people, essentially you had either: select people from your linkedin network or add an email address/phone number and name you know them by.
Then after selecting a person you're asked how closely you worked with them; becuase sometimes it's a nice person but you can't speak to competence: sometimes, it's someone you were really in the trenches with and they had your back.
I also design the opposite of this, where you would "un"-recommend people, or essentially downflag their application.
The thing is, my system wasn't fully integrated in the the HR management system, so it would add a comment if someone applied with the correct details but recruiters didn't have access to the database of recommended people- it also had an issue where someone could impersonate someone else by pasting the same linkedin link - though then they might need to know who might be recommended.
Anyway, nothing foolproof, just making it easier for people with a good reputation to be integrated into the company easier.
It really shows how AI is going to change the entire industry.
Let's imagine tomorrow a Product Manager at LinkedIn wants to introduce this as an official functionality? They're going to have to run it by management or their pod (or find the PM in charge of that area if its not them), finish existing project, wait for resources to be ready, have legal/marketing/compliance involved, get it developed, go through all the other red tape, etc.
I don't know exactly how LinkedIn works internally, but I'm sure some of this is accurate.
So maybe, MAYBE they'll have it in a couple of months? But someone can build it in a few hours, even if they're not super good at this stuff.
It changes everything about how we think about products and SaaS software.
I've read the instructions steps as:
1. Download your entire LinkedIn data.
2. Give us your entire LinkedIn data.
The "larger" data they are asking for includes "... connections, verifications, contacts, account history, and information we infer about you based on your profile and activity ..."
[flagged]
The feature is interesting and I'm sure you're in good faith, but you're effectively doing LinkedIn-scraping, just outsourced to your users. Why not use the official API?
(The GDPR implications of this service are also significant. Being in the US does not exempt you from observing that if any of your records are from European users.)
But it is there: If you search for jobs and expose "All filters" there is a filter called "In your network" which filters down exactly to this.