From TechCrunch, Ingrid Lunden reports that LinkedIn has launched a new job market for freelancers. Ingrid writes:
LinkedIn, the Microsoft-owned platform for those connecting with others in their fields of work and those looking for work, has been known best in recruitment for sourcing candidates and advertising job openings for permanent work. Now, to complement that, LinkedIn is opening up a new front in the job market for freelancers.
Today it is taking the wraps off its Service Marketplace, a new feature that will let people advertise themselves for short-term engagements to those looking to hire people for such roles, competing against the likes of Fiverr and Upwork for sourcing skilled knowledge workers.
The launch of its freelancer platform is coming alongside a few other key updates from LinkedIn around other job-hunting tools, underscoring how the company is looking to adapt to new current trends in the job market and how we work.
They include new search filters to find jobs (permanent jobs, that is) that are remote, hybrid or on-site; and these can also now be indicated on your “Open to Work” indicator if you have that turned on to invite recruiters to contact you. Alongside this, you can now also check out companies’ vaccination requirements as part of how you evaluate jobs (if the employer has indicated those details itself). Service Marketplace was first leaked out as a small test in February this year. Since then, LinkedIn has been running a quiet beta of the service in the U.S., which has already picked up 2 million users from among the nearly 800 million users (as of yesterday’s earnings report) that LinkedIn now has globally.
As of today, Service Marketplace is going to be turned on for everyone globally: to set up a freelancer profile, you go to your own profile page, find the button near the top and follow the script to set it up and flag what you might be interested in working on.
The new feature marks an interesting turning point for LinkedIn under the wing of Microsoft, which picked up about 25 million new users in the last quarter.
Read the full story at: LinkedIn rolls out its freelance services marketplace globally after picking up 2M users in smaller US beta | TechCrunch
