LinkedIn’s Careerify deal could help your company win more battles for talent

LinkedIn, with more than 300 million members, could become significantly more useful to companies and job seekers as a result of its acquisition of Careerify, which was announced today.

Careerify’s software taps the social networks of a company’s employees to see which of their friends would be the best fit for job openings at the company. The software can also show employees which other jobs are available at the company, which can foster retention. But as part of LinkedIn, Careerify’s tools could become the basis for new tools that could become available to far more companies as part of LinkedIn’s consumer-facing service.

“LinkedIn helps connect people to opportunity, be it a new job, a better job, or a dream job,” a LinkedIn spokesman wrote in a statement to VentureBeat. “We’re excited to welcome the team from Careerify to LinkedIn; we believe that their expertise will help us accelerate our efforts in this area.”

LinkedIn won’t be getting a big influx of employees — just three of four Careerify team members are joining LinkedIn, the spokesman told VentureBeat.

But the deal could help LinkedIn bring in more revenue by enabling companies to fill job openings more quickly.

Harpaul Sambhi, Careerify’s founder and chief executive, emphasized people getting jobs in his own blog post on the news today.

“We look forward to working with the LinkedIn team to help people find their dream jobs, and jobs find the right people,” Sambhi wrote.

The Careerify services will remain available for existing customers, Sambhi wrote. The startup’s customer list includes Deloitte, Groupon, Microsoft, SpaceX, and Unilever.

Careerify started in 2009 and had offices in San Francisco and Toronto, Canada.