The path to a new job isn’t always clear. But, one way to get a handle on figuring out your next move is LinkedIn’s Career Explorer which helps you uncover potential career path transitions and see how your skills match to real job titles. Here’s how it works:

• LinkedIn measures 36,000 unique skills across 6,000+ unique job titles.
• The data captures transferable skills and ranks them at the top helping to identify next job opportunities.
• It then digs deeper to identify skills overlaps and points out those skills you need to develop to make you a viable candidate.
• LinkedIn Career Explorer pulls everything together into a single metric called a “skills similarity” to help you understand how well your current position might transition to another by assigning it a score between 0 and 100.

In order to calculate the similarity score for two jobs, LinkedIn identifies the most important skills for each job based on LinkedIn’s Skills Genome. The similarity score reflects both the overlap of common skills between two jobs as well as the relative importance of those skills for each job. The Skills You’ll Need are a selection of skills important for the desired job that are not typically common in the Skills Genome for the current job.

It’s easy to use the LinkedIn Career Explorer tool to find possible job transitions based on LinkedIn insights into skills similarity. Here’s an example:

Begin by entering your location.

Then, enter your most recent role to see the transitions you could make. You’ll see the skills you already have in common with those jobs. The listed skills also serves as a checklist against those skills you have currently listed in your LinkedIn Profile as well as on your résumé.

You’ll see the skills you may need to build, along with open jobs that are available in your region and a matched ranking to the prospective transition on a scale of 0 to 100. It’s a quick step to then find jobs and Connections on LinkedIn.

Give LinkedIn’s Career Explorer a test drive 

About Garrison Leykam, PhD:

Certified Business Coach (Expert Level)
Certified Remote Work Professional
Certified Professional Career Coach (CPCC)
Certified Professional, Résumé Writer (CPRW)
Certified Employment Interview Professional (CEIP)
Certified Life Coach (Expert Level)
PhD Marketing, MA Psychology
LinkedIn profile in Top 25 MA, PhD profiles in U.S.
Top 1% LinkedIn Industry Social Selling Index
Author, Audacious at Any Age and Design You