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LinkedIn is expanding its AI-powered job search features

The platform continues to grow as a hub for seeking jobs and holding professional discussions.

LinkedIn is expanding its AI-powered job search features
[Source photo: Unsplash]

LinkedIn’s AI-powered job search feature is expanding to new audiences.

The tool—which lets job seekers find relevant open positions without needing to exactly match keywords in the job title or description—will soon be available to all LinkedIn members using the site in English and expanding to Spanish, French, German, and Portuguese. AI-powered job search is already used by 1.3 million people daily, with more than 25 million job searches conducted via the tool every week. And initial data indicates that job seekers without a four-year college degree who use the tool are 10% more likely to get hired than before, according to the company.

“This is a really meaningful shift, because our vision is economic opportunity for every member of the global workforce,” says Rohan Rajiv, senior director of product management and product lead for job search at LinkedIn. “We know that in the past, if you were a line cook or a taco chef, it wasn’t that easy to find those jobs on LinkedIn.”

The AI search tool even lets users specify general properties of a job, like saying “I want to protect the world’s oceans,” and find relevant listings, he says. That’s a result of careful, iterative development of a large language model-powered system that can parse job titles, descriptions and other data, understanding the nuances of how listings may vary by location and industry. One job listing may refer to “partnerships,” while another listing for a similar position refers to “business development” work, for example. And the AI is able to deliver both listings to potential applicants without them needing to search for a specific keyword.

“Compared to traditional keyword searches, it felt more intuitive and less mechanical,” writes Anderson Cheng, who recently found a job at the Los Angeles County Affordable Housing Solutions Agency via the tool, in an email to Fast Company. “The biggest surprise was how well it surfaced roles I might have skipped over based on title alone, but that were actually a strong fit once I reviewed the description more closely.”

The AI is carefully designed to be speedy, so users don’t have to wait long for results, as well as accurate and internally cost effective, Rajiv says. The results are created in part by LinkedIn staff evaluating them using a second LLM-powered system, then providing the core AI with additional examples in areas where it underperforms. Using AI to evaluate results lets the company check a broader sample than they could practically look at by hand.

“The magic of building these products is that you’re able to evaluate these products at scale,” says Rajiv.

The expanded AI access comes as the Microsoft-owned platform continues to evolve beyond a mere virtual rolodex and resume board, perhaps especially in the post-pandemic era. Revenue has more than doubled from $7 billion in 2020 to $17 billion in 2025, according to LinkedIn. It has long been used by recruiters to find potential candidates and vet applicants, making maintaining a profile there critical in many industries. “If you say something in your résumé, they might look at your LinkedIn and see if those things line up,” says Daniel Usera, a clinical associate professor at the University of Texas at Arlington who has studied LinkedIn.

Job searches are also a big part of what LinkedIn offers. The company reports that every minute, nearly 50 new hires are made through LinkedIn and more than 11,000 job applications are submitted through the platform.

It’s also a social network, where 17,000 new connections are formed every minute. Another recently released AI feature, known as AI-powered people search, helps users find potential connections based on plain language criteria, like “investors with FDA experience for a biotech startup” or “Northwestern alumni who work in entertainment marketing,” rather than simply looking people up by name and employer. The platform has also given people new ways to express themselves in recent years, including adding short-form video similar to TikTok.

LinkedIn posts are sometimes mocked and parodied for their excessive business boosterism, and cringey work lessons drawn from personal trauma. But the site has become a legitimately unique place for people to share work updates, from promotions to hiring announcements, along with insights about their fields.

“We kind of have this sense of professionalism in terms of how you’re supposed to post, how you’re supposed to interact,” says Usera. “And the topics are generally professional in nature.”

More than 1.9 million feed updates are viewed every minute as of October 2025, according to the company, which reports that comments on the network are up 24% year-over-year. Usera says his research indicates that tagging other people in LinkedIn posts, perhaps in celebrating their achievements and contributions to your own work, can help boost engagement. And while he hasn’t yet formally studied the LinkedIn “cringe” phenomenon, he says awkward posts can result from attempts at modesty, where people allude to personal achievements in roundabout ways, and those forced analogies between the personal and professional.

“Maybe the lesson is you don’t need to always be creative,” he says. “You can just be factual and just trust that your network supports you and will be happy for you.”

And as the platform’s AI job search functionality expands, the same lesson likely applies to job postings. While job description language have historically sometimes been an afterthought, providing clear detail about what a position entails helps ensure it shows up in AI-powered searches, says Rajiv.

“We are moving away from a world focused on keywords to a world where you need to say things as they are,” he says.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steven Melendez is an independent journalist living in New Orleans. More

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