Breaking News: LinkedIn Retiring Its Job Search App

breaking news

LinkedIn, the social networking site for business professionals and job seekers, announced last week that it will be retiring its standalone LinkedIn Job Search app in May. For a number of years, this mobile app has been a leading resource for job seekers. I have frequently recommended it to my clients as part of their job search strategy, and I even included it last year on my list of recommended smartphone apps. For those of you using the app, here’s what you need to know.

You can still use LinkedIn to look for jobs.

All the features of the current app will be integrated into the main LinkedIn app, and the company actually claims the job search experience will be improved. “We’ve built a robust job seeking experience within the main LinkedIn app that we’re excited for our members to take advantage of,” LinkedIn says in a statement. “They’ll have access to more insights and features than they did in the Job Search app that can help them better navigate their careers, as well as the ability to reach out to the 610M+ professionals on LinkedIn for help on their journey.”

Your saved jobs and job alerts will transfer seamlessly to the main app.

If you’re worried about having to start over with your saved jobs and alerts preferences, or losing information about the jobs you’ve applied to, LinkedIn says you shouldn’t be. These preferences, tied to your profile, should transfer over to the main LinkedIn app once the Job Search app is retired.

LinkedIn’s Premium features will enhance the experience.

According to LinkedIn, most job search features within the integrated platform will be free, but deeper insights into companies and applicants, as well as a few other features, will remain under the premium banner. The information is currently a little unclear as to whether any of the current free functions of Job Search will become paid functions, but from all appearances anything that is currently free will remain free. That said, I recommend upgrading to LinkedIn Premium if possible to get the best job search experience, anyway.

We’ll keep tracking with this switchover and let you know if there’s anything else you need to know.