LinkedIn has released an app that has the potential to bring in more young people to its social network. The new app, appropriately titled LinkedIn Students, is made specifically for helping college students in their efforts to find jobs after graduation.
The app assists students with everything from creating a profile, finding their career path, and locating relevant job postings. Where the app shines as an extension of a social network is the fact that it can also help students connect with alumni who studied the same subject in school.
To be sure, this app is most definitely for students and graduates. Some of the more experienced LinkedIn users, or professionals with greater levels of experience, may find the app lacking compared to LinkedIn’s flagship app.
What’s interesting to note is that college students are actually LinkedIn’s fastest growing user demographic at the moment, with over 40 million of them already registered. However, there is still some apprehension amongst young people to join the network, and the company wants to keep the momentum going.
According to Ada Yu, a product manager at LinkedIn, the number one reason why students don’t join LinkedIn is because they don’t yet consider themselves to be a professional. “They don’t have that network yet, and they don’t know what to put on their profile,” says Yu.
LinkedIn Students helps remove those barriers by guiding students through the process of creating a complete profile, then showing them how to use that profile to navigate the social network to connect with other professionals and apply for jobs.
The app is available as of today on both iOS and Android.
