Linkedin Today Industry News for Recruiters

Linkedin recently announced a news feature that should be very useful to recruiters. Linkedin Today, which was announced last week, highlights the most shared and talked about news stories from around the web.

The interesting part about the new feature is that it is divided up by industry, which is quite relevant to recruiters. If you recruit for the energy industry, for example, you can easily keep up to date on your industry by visiting the “oil and energy” section. Recruiters need to stay in touch with happenings in their industry, so it’s an important feature to pay attention to.

Of course, knowing about breaking news in an industry does not differentiate a recruiter. It is as important if not more important to “go deep” into your industry of choice. If you recruit in the software industry, for example, your clients and candidates will not be impressed by your knowledge of the latest iPad release. They may, however, be impressed if you talk to them about the debate on open source software or the challenges of recruiting Silverlight developers.

In the quest to better yourself, it’s important to differentiate transient news from deep industry knowledge. Recruiters looking to better their knowledge of an industry should certainly stay apprised of industry news, but then make sure to challenge themselves with deeper industry knowledge meant for practitioners.

Linkedin has been rapidly rolling out new features in anticipation of their IPO. Because Linkedin is such an important part of recruiting, let’s hope that they continue to build tools with recruiters in mind. You can read more about Linkedin Today on Linkedin’s company blog.