While Microsoft’s takeover of LinkedIn hasn’t lead to a raft of major external changes at either company, the tech giant’s slowly building in more integrations, which hint at what may be coming from the pairing.
The latest Microsoft/LinkedIn merging is a new tool called Resume Assistant in Microsoft 365, which will help users when creating their resume by offering real-world, professional insights direct from LinkedIn.
As you can see, the tools works as a reference companion, providing insights from how people on LinkedIn have structured their experiences and skills, helping you optimize your resume for the position you want.
In addition, Resume Assistant will also help by enabling users to:
- Identify top skill - Find the most prominent skills for the type of job you’re seeking so you can more easily increase your discoverability.
- Customize a resume based on real job postings - People can see relevant job listings from LinkedIn’s 11 million open jobs and customize their resume to appeal to recruiters.
- Get professional help - Easily connect to ProFinder, LinkedIn’s freelance platform, to get additional hands-on resume writing, interview, and career coaching.
- Let recruiters know you’re open - Candidates can quietly let recruiters know they are open to new opportunities with Open Candidates.
As noted, it’s not a ground-breaking integration, and smaller integrations like these don’t necessarily justify the $26.2 billion price tag which Microsoft paid for the social network. But cumulatively, Microsoft’s slowly working to integrate LinkedIn’s vast professional data insights into its offerings, which could eventually give Microsoft a significant advantage, particularly when you consider the value of LinkedIn’s unmatched database.
On another, similar front, LinkedIn's also announced an upgrade to their Rapportive e-mail insights tool, which is used by many professionals to get immediate, LinkedIn-based insights direct within their inbox.
Instead of upgrading Rapportive, LinkedIn’s replacing it with a new, free tool called ‘Sales Navigator Lite’ for Gmail.
The new version incorporates the same functionality as Rapportive – hover over any e-mail address and you’ll get a listing of LinkedIn insights for that person. But the new tool also provides more advanced features, including ‘icebreakers’, which highlights elements like mutual connections to help spark the conversation, and the ability to connect directly on LinkedIn with email contacts, without having to leave your inbox.
LinkedIn rolled out a similar integration for Microsoft Outlook earlier this month.
These are valuable, helpful additions, and again, they highlight the benefits of LinkedIn data for Microsoft (and Gmail) users, and how Microsoft will be looking to utilize those insights to expand their product offerings.
And really, these are only the start – as LinkedIn and Microsoft continue to work together, you can expect to see more, similar integrations and data tools built in, which will help boost Microsoft’s products, elevating them above rival offerings.