The End of “Apply with LinkedIn” & into a Mobile World

Recruiters have to rethink their mobile Apply with Linkedin button. As of August 1st, LinkedIn is only providing access to their existing Profile REST API, and will no longer support the famous simple “Apply with LinkedIn” plug in.

The Apply with LinkedIn plugin was a nice and easy way for recruiters and their developers to enable job seekers to apply for jobs, especially on mobile websites, using the information on their LinkedIn profile to apply for their next perfect job.

Uploading resumes through mobile devices has been a difficult feature, and it is becoming more significant as the data shows a growing number of job seekers utilizing their smartphones and tablets to search and apply for jobs. Mobile penetration is growing rapidly, according to the country level reports from the 2013 Our Mobile Planet Smartphone Research.

More than 75% of job seekers use mobile search apps, according to Beyond, a third of traffic to job search engines now comes from mobile devices and is estimated to reach 50% within a year.

Better Solutions

By focusing on the single Profile REST API, LinkedIn states they will be able to allow engineers to get the data they need straight from LinkedIn, giving them more freedom to customize the experience to fit their applications. Therefore, the Apply with LinkedIn plugin is being retired, and LinkedIn is encouraging developers to migrate before August 1. LinkedIn claims their API provides a better solution for desktop and mobile and wants to focus on maintaining just the single API product.

Companies like Imomentous, Hirefuel and Maddle offer alternatives. Maddle from the Netherlands presented the first ‘mobile jobs’ in html5 at #mRec2011 San Francisco and ERE in San Diego Maddle became the first to include the REST API solution by LinkedIn, added Xing and Viadeo, and a fully comprehensive mobile resume upload feature ‘Mobile Cloud Apply’, integrating services like DropBox, OneDrive, Boxnet and Google Drive.

So there are alternatives for recruiters and their mobile job seekers to complete the application process from any mobile device as easily as from a desktop computer.
Let’s go (mobile)!