Adapting LinkedIn's Professional Network for Students Starting Their Careers
Company: Stripe
Role: Product Manager
Category: Product Design & Strategy
Difficulty: medium
Interview Round: Other
How would you design a LinkedIn experience aimed at students?
```hint Start from what students lack
LinkedIn assumes a work history and an existing professional network. Think about what a student has instead, and what they are trying to get out of a professional network at their stage.
```
### Clarifying Questions
- Which students: high schoolers choosing a college, undergraduates looking for internships, or graduate students heading into industry?
- Is this a separate app, or a student mode inside the main LinkedIn product that members keep after they graduate?
- Whose problem comes first: students trying to launch a career, or recruiters and employers trying to reach early-career talent?
### What a Strong Answer Covers
- Why LinkedIn would want this, for its future members and for employers hiring early-career talent
- A chosen student segment, with the reason it beats the alternatives
- Pain points specific to students with little experience and few professional contacts, ranked
- Solutions prioritized into a first version that uses data LinkedIn already has, such as school and alumni information
- Success metrics with guardrails, including the load placed on professionals who receive student requests
### Follow-up Questions
- Alumni stop replying because they receive too many student requests. What do you change?
- How do you move a student into the regular LinkedIn experience at graduation without losing them?
- A university career office wants to partner with you. What would you offer it, and what would you ask for in return?
Overview: A product design question asking how LinkedIn could be adapted for students. It tests choosing a student segment, explaining why a network built around work history fails people with little experience, prioritizing features for a first version, and defining success metrics that weigh students' needs against the professionals they contact.