LinkedIn Turbo Charges Our Entry Level Jobs and Internships Group

CollegeRecruiter.com created the LinkedIn discussion group, Entry-Level Jobs and Internships, a year ago as a way to help us reach more stakeholders in the college and university recruiting space including recruiters, hiring managers, human resource professionals, college career service office professionals, students, recent graduates, parents, and other influencers. As of today, the group has over 3,500 members, making it one of the largest college recruiting groups at LinkedIn.
Given the importance of the Entry-Level Jobs and Internships group, I was excited to see that LinkedIn is rolling out some significant updates to all of its groups — the first major update since it created the discussions feature in August 2008.

So what are the new features? Below is a video from LinkedIn that walks you through the key features but here’s a summary:

1. Improved look-and-feel. The wall between original remarks and off-site content such as shared news articles is being removed. You’ll also be able to see profile pictures of and links to the participants in the conversations.
2. Ease of use. Browsing through the latest updates will be faster and easier and you’ll be able to roll over the images of the last three participants of any thread to see comment previews and click right to their segment of the conversation. If you prefer, you can add a comment in line without having to go to the discussion page.
3. Surfacing the most popular and recent discussions in a group – faster. Discussions will be democratized with group members deciding on which discussions will be seen most prominently by the group. Your “like” or “flag as inappropriate” actions will now carry significant weight.
4. Making it easier for you to receive email updates from select group members. If there are group members who you want to follow closely, LinkedIn will now allow you to set up email alerts when they contribute to discussions.
5. Shining a spotlight on users who add most value to the group each week. Those who drive the activity of the group’s discussions each week will be recognized as “top influencers.” These people will be those who contribute the most and also start the most active discussions so this rewards both quantity and quality.