Pick and Defend LinkedIn's Next Major Product Investment

You are a product manager at LinkedIn. Make the case for the next thing LinkedIn should build: choose the opportunity you would invest in, explain why it beats the alternatives, and say how you would know it worked. ```hint Find the gap before the feature Start from LinkedIn's mission and the groups it serves (job seekers, recruiters, students, creators, sales teams), find the one where a step of their journey is clearly broken, and commit to it instead of offering a feature for everyone. ``` ### Clarifying Questions - Is the aim of this bet engagement, revenue from lines such as Premium, hiring products and ads, or a stronger professional graph, or is the goal my call? - Should I stay inside LinkedIn's existing ecosystem of members, recruiters and advertisers, or is an adjacent new business in scope? - Are we looking for something that can ship within a year, or a multi-year strategic bet? ### What a Strong Answer Covers - A goal anchored in LinkedIn's mission and business model, set before any ideas - A survey of member and customer segments with a reasoned choice of one to serve - Pain points drawn from that segment's journey, and solutions that use assets only LinkedIn has, such as its identity data, professional graph and hiring marketplace - Prioritization by impact, effort and risk, including the effect on the other side of the marketplace - A north-star metric, supporting metrics and guardrails, plus a cheap way to validate before scaling ### Follow-up Questions - Your idea needs employers to do more work or share more data. Why would they, and what happens if most of them do not? - How would you run an experiment in a two-sided marketplace where treating one job posting changes what applicants do on other postings? - Which alternative did you rank second, and what evidence would make you switch to it?