LinkedIn's new app for students tries to make job-hunting easier

There's been a lot of talk in recent years about how hard it is for recent college graduates to find gainful employment. LinkedIn has become a major source for job hunting and networking, but it's more focused on current professionals rather than those just entering the workforce. The company's changing that a bit with the new LinkedIn Students app for iOS and Android. It essentially pulls in all the data in the LinkedIn network and focuses it on those soon to be leaving college to help them find positions that make sense given their backgrounds.

Once you download the app, you're promoted to enter your education info and background -- from there, you'll go through five steps in the app every day to keep up with your job search. The app suggests roles and positions based on your education, sends you curated job-hunting articles, lets you see which companies are hiring graduates from your school, shows job listings relevant to your major and year of graduation and serves up other LinkedIn profiles from recent alumni with your major. It's all meant to help you find jobs that might work for you and suggest positions you might not have considered already.

How useful this app will actually be remains to be seen, but there's no doubt that LinkedIn has a massive amount of career-related data. Providing a way for students who are close to graduating to tap into that data in a way that's more relevant to their job search could be useful. It's also a simplified set of tools for students -- the company says it'll be shutting down a variety of other tools for students in favor of LinkedIn Students. If you want to give the app a shot, it launches today on iOS and Android.