LinkedIn for Android

LinkedIn for Android helps you search for, connect, and network with existing colleagues at your company or in your professional network and meet new ones that can help you progress in your career or into a new position at another company. You can also search for and apply for jobs on LinkedIn mobile and get relevant company updates and industry news that can help you further your career.

SEE: The best job search apps for iOS and Android to help you get hired (a Download.com guide)

Pros

Bring your resume to life: A resume feels stark and static in comparison to a dynamic LinkedIn profile, which lets you showcase more of yourself and your accomplishments, with a photo, background photo, job title, and summary, as well as work experience, education, Featured Skills & Endorsements, Recommendations, Accomplishments, and Interests sections.

Streamlined networking: LinkedIn is organized around five tabs. Tap Home to share updates, article links, photos, and videos and like, comment, and share others' news feed posts. On My Network, you can see people you may know, check out invitations, and add connections. Messaging allows you to send personalized and canned messages, photos, and GIFs to colleagues. Notifications shows you all the recent updates from your connections as well as jobs you may be interested in. The Jobs page shows you a listing of available positions based on your profile and career interests, and which connections work there or can help you get a job there. Finally, use the Search field up top to find people, schools, and companies you want to connect to or follow.

Build new connections: LinkedIn enables you to add new connections to your social network by tapping the Connect button on their profile page or on their abbreviated profile tiles under People you may know. You'll also receive LinkedIn invitations from other members.

Maintain existing connections: LinkedIn is good for forming new connections, but it's also great for maintaining existing ones. Check out a current or former colleague's page, view and respond to their updates and posts, or send them a private message.

Helpful tips: LinkedIn offers plenty of tips to strengthen your profile by adding personal, educational, and career information so that it will get noticed by more LinkedIn members.

Post views: Like Twitter, LinkedIn tells you how many views each of your shares get. This gives you a good idea of what your network is most interested in seeing from you, so you can post only the most relevant content each and every time.

LinkedIn Job search: LinkedIn enables job seekers to easily search for jobs while you're on the go. To save time on searching, you can create and save job searches, so that LinkedIn serves the most relevant positions to you. Then start applying in the app. Or if a job has Easy apply under it, you can apply to it with your LinkedIn profile without ever leaving the app in just a couple taps.

Follow business and industry news: See relevant industry news stories shared by colleagues or companies you follow. You can also follow influencers who inspire you to see their posts and learn from them.

Premium Career subscription: If you need that extra bit of help in finding a job, you can upgrade your account to Premium Career, which costs $29.99 per month, and you'll be able to directly contact recruiters and job posters, see who's viewed your profile over the last three months (whether you have your profile set to Private mode or not), get to the top of the job pool as a featured applicant, and see how you compare to other applicants. You'll also, through LinkedIn Learning, learn in-demand skills for your industry online from esteemed professionals.

Free trial: You can try a Premium Career subscription for an entire month to see if you find it useful before purchasing.

Privacy features: Under Settings, then Privacy, you can choose what people see on your profile, whether LinkedIn shares your major status updates with your network, who can follow you, whether you're suggested as a connection to people who add their contacts and already have your phone number, whether other users can tell if you're online, and much more.

Cons

Users can see that you've viewed their profiles: Unless you have your profile set to Private mode, then anytime you check out another user's page, they'll get alerted. But the downside of setting your profile to Private mode is that you won't be able to see who's viewed your profile. The only way to see who's viewed your page without other users seeing your viewing behavior is to upgrade to premium.

Bottom Line

LinkedIn for Android is the premier networking app to help you build and maintain professional connections, search and apply for jobs, and follow industry news.