This was reported by fastcompany.com. LinkedIn Director of Product Management, Hari Srinivasan, confirmed to the website that 89% of the network's users in the roles of senior leaders would like to give advice. On the other hand, users who are looking for advice on LinkedIn are most interested in how further to develop their careers.
Immediate recommendation of suitable people
The new virtual mentoring service on LinkedIn will first be available to a small group of users. It should be available for all users at the end of this summer. Users will be able to use it free of charge. It should work simply.
First users have to log in using the "Your dashboard" button on their profiles. They enter the "Career advice hub" section where they can register as a mentor or mentee. Then they specify more detailed information about themselves and their requirements. They will also be able to choose whether they are interested in mentoring in the field of entrepreneurship, job search or career development.
After they have filled in the necessary data, a LinkedIn matching algorithm immediately sends a message to users identified as the best to help them. When a user selects a specific person from the recommended list, another message is immediately sent to the person, asking them to connect with the user for mentoring purposes.
If both parties then agree to cooperate, they can stay in contact with each other via LinkedIn or in any other way they choose.
Quality of advice is more important than speed
At first sight, an algorithm capable of utilising the expertise of the more than 500 million LinkedIn users looks like a great opportunity, suggests fastcompany.com. However, LinkedIn's own representatives admit some pitfalls here.
Mentoring, for example, often fails because people can't express their needs or they require too much from mentors. LinkedIn is therefore trying to connect users so they always have something in common. It also prepares written recommendations for users both to provide and ask for advice in the most effective way.
According to Suzi Owens of LinkedIn's Consumer Products and Communication Department, this is not an attempt to come up with an alternative to replace long-term mentoring.
The new service is intended primarily to respond to quick questions such as which solution is better in a particular situation. However, users should not expect immediate responses because mentors will not have time to respond straightaway. On the other hand, they can expect genuine expert advice, which is worth waiting a while for.
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