LinkedIn rolls out new features at an incredibly fast pace — it’s quite honestly hard to keep up! I’ve included four that rolled out over the past year that stand out and shared my take on how they can help medical sales job seekers.

1. Voice messaging

If you’ve ever taken the time to type out a message, and then thought to yourself that it would have sounded better said aloud, then LinkedIn has you covered.

You can now record conversations up to a minute long, but only if you’re on mobile and your message is to a first-degree connection.

For job seekers, the biggest advantage of voice messaging is that it allows you to speak in your own voice. This gives you the opportunity to build a more personal connection by conveying tone and even a bit of personality into your communications — sometimes that is easy to get lost in an email.

Furthermore, many in sales are road warriors. Your chance of a message being heard might increase if it can be heard rather then read when the recipient is in the field or on the road.

To access this feature from your mobile device, simply go to messages and enter the name of your first-degree connection.

Tap and hold the microphone button in the lower right corner and start speaking! If you flubbed the message during your first attempt, simply slide your finger away from the microphone icon while holding it down and start again.  

My advice to job seekers? Perform some A/B testing. If you find your response rate increases with voice messaging vs first-connection written responses, act accordingly.

2. Find people nearby

I tried “Find Nearby” at a networking event last month, and it made me realize I may never have to pack business cards again!

To take advantage of this mobile-only feature, make sure your phone’s Bluetooth is turned on. Next, go to the “My Network” icon (the one with the little heads to the right of the “Home” or house icon). Turn on the “Find Nearby” function to discover other LinkedIn users in attendance.

If someone is within 100 feet of you and has the “Find Nearby” function activated, you can message them, invite them to connect on the spot, and quite possibly skip the business card exchange altogether.

For those concerned about privacy, LinkedIn advises users to opt-in to take advantage of this feature, and that accounts can only be discovered when on the “Find Nearby” page.

My advice to job seekers? When attending any sort of networking activity from lunch to coffee, don’t leave without connecting!

3. Smart replies

If having to choose between ignoring or sending a reply, I’ll always favor sending a reply. LinkedIn gets this and has created smart replies — I imagine to foster increased engagement.

The problem with LinkedIn’s smart replies, however, is that they don’t feel super authentic. Is a smart reply better or worse than failing to reply at all? To be honest, I’m not sure, but I’m of the opinion that a surefire way to kill engagement is to come off as inauthentic.

My advice to job seekers? Take the time to reply to all messages, never ghost, and when doing so make sure the words you choose reflect your own voice.

4. Job title highlights

When people search on LinkedIn for a specific job function or title, they scroll down to the bottom and see alternative job titles.

This feature has huge implications for job seekers and can be used in a variety of ways. Here a couple that come to mind:

1. Job seekers can use this section to identify keywords that should appear in the headline of both their resume and LinkedIn profile.

1. As part of benchmarking or competitive research, job seekers can take advantage of job title highlights to identify candidates currently in the types of roles they are targeting.

1. In order to build their network, job seekers can employ job search highlights to identify those LinkedIn members that they would like to connect with to advance their job search.

My advice to job seekers? Take advantage of this feature to maximize your headline and your networking outreach as part of your medical sales job hunt.