Sponsored Job Listings Now Appearing In LinkedIn’s Main Feed, And On Mobile For The First Time

LinkedIn’s Sponsored Jobs listings are getting increased visibility today, with a move that has them now appearing in LinkedIn’s main feed on the member homepage. Before, Sponsored Jobs were only available in the “Jobs You May Be Interested In” module on the homepage, and in emails sent out to subscribers. The move highlights LinkedIn’s push to make its homepage feed the main place for kicking off interactions with the site’s content. The feed currently also includes other regular draws, like updates about your connections’ job changes, profile updates, recommended articles on LinkedIn Today, posts, likes, discussions and more.

The Sponsored Jobs offering launched on the network last fall, allowing employers to target candidates through paid postings. Employers can bid for top placement in the job recommendations, and pay when candidates click through. The benefit to these listings is that they have the capability of reaching those who may not be actively looking for work, but happen across the job recommendation on the site or via email, and decide to learn more or apply.

By placing a Sponsored Listing in the LinkedIn feed, there’s an increased chance that potential job seekers, including passive ones, will discover it, as the feed becomes more of a centralized resource for all of the current happenings across the network – a concept popularized by Facebook’s News Feed detailing friends’ social activity.

More importantly, perhaps, LinkedIn says today’s change involving Sponsored Jobs will bring the listings to mobile for the first time.

The company only recently began taking advantage of mobile as a place to really attract job seekers, having introduced the ability for users to search for jobs in its mobile apps earlier this summer, and then in August, allowing them to actually apply for jobs via their phone – even without a resume. The challenge of mobile, with its small screens and uploading difficulties, has historically made job search more of a desktop-only activity. But mobile phones are now users’ go-to computing devices, and a growing number of users (6 million in the U.S.) have used mobile devices to apply for jobs – a number that’s doubled year-over-year. Other job search companies, including CareerBuilder to Monster.com, have already offered mobile apply, as has Proven, an app going after the “un-LinkedIn,” meaning more of the entry-level jobs and those for service workers often found on sites like Craigslist.

LinkedIn says today that over 30 percent of members who view jobs on its network come from mobile, and early tests indicate that Sponsored Jobs are four times more engaging on mobile than desktop. That bodes well for the company’s ability to take advantage of consumers’ changing behaviors when it comes to the rapid adoption of mobile devices.

Sponsored Listings are now rolling out to the feed of LinkedIn’s English-speaking members on the desktop, on the mobile web, and in its iOS and Android applications, and will expand globally over the next few weeks.