Close Skill Gaps: New LinkedIn Features Empower Employees to Grow Professionally

With uncertainty a constant in today's talent market, employees are recognizing the need to build a career with resilience by expanding their skills. Companies can empower this growth by creating cultures of employee-driven learning that open new paths for more people. Today, we’re enabling employees to close their skills gaps with Professional Certificates from leading third-party providers and explore new career paths with new internal mobility features in LinkedIn Learning. 

Introducing assessment-based Professional Certificates from Zendesk and more



There’s renewed urgency around being able to swiftly and reliably upskill employees: 68% of global leaders believe skills gaps will widen during an economic downturn, according to a recent survey from YouGov commissioned by LinkedIn. And our members recognize the importance of showcasing their skills too: they're adding credentials to their profile at an accelerated rate (up 16%) comparing 2022 to 2021.

That's why today, we're introducing Professional Certificates, a new credential that can be added to a member’s profile based on curating learning and assessment in partnership with leading companies in their industries like Zendesk, SS&C Blue Prism, Microsoft, and LambdaTest- with many more expected to launch throughout 2023 and beyond. With Professional Certificates, L&D professionals can help learners build in-demand skills, such as customer service or intelligent automation, with curated learning, validate those skills with an assessment, and earn a credential from trusted third party providers they can showcase - all on our platform. 

“We are thrilled LinkedIn chose Zendesk as their trusted CX provider for this certificate,” said Beth Friday, SVP Customer Experience at Zendesk, “With this partnership, we are committing to providing credible ways for CX leaders to showcase their expertise to the world’s most dynamic professional community.” 

With the launch of Professional Certificates, we're building on the variety of ways learners can already prove their skills with LinkedIn Learning, including: over 500 courses that prepare learners for off-platform certification exams, over 2,000 courses that can apply towards continuing education units to maintain certifications and licenses, and over 40 learning paths that can count as academic credit toward a degree at multiple partner universities.

Helping employees accelerate their careers and explore internal roles

We know top and tenured talent leaving has big ramifications for organizations striving to adapt to the macro uncertainty of today, with nearly all (93%) saying they're concerned about employee retention this year. A key way to retain this talent is encouraging internal mobility: our data shows that at the two-year mark, an employee who has made an internal move has a greater chance (75%) of staying with their company. 

On LinkedIn Learning, we want to make it easy for employees to build their careers, helping them explore open jobs at their current company, specify their career goals, and receive curated content and recommendations personalized to those goals. Now, in addition to job recommendations based on an employee’s career goals or current job title, we’re surfacing recommendations for new internal job opportunities based on an employees’ skills. And, for every job, employees will be able to see what skills they have that match, and potential skills gaps they can close with learning.

We’re also helping organizations  give their employees a better understanding of the skills needed for specific internal roles, and curated learning to start building them. Through new customized Role Guides, organizations can now tailor guides based on their own job titles, role descriptions, skills, and content. That way, employees looking to make a pivot within an organization know exactly where to start. 

Cultures that support career development make organizations– and people– agile. To learn more about how to build an adaptable and resilient workforce through learning, check out LinkedIn’s 2023 Workplace Learning Report. And to learn more about LinkedIn Learning's latest product innovation, check out our Quarterly Product Release.