LinkedIn’s product evolution and the art of building complex systems | Hari Srinivasan (LinkedIn)
Hari Srinivasan, VP of Product for Talent Solutions at LinkedIn, discusses how the hiring market is changing, the shift to skills-based hiring, and how to improve job search odds on LinkedIn. He also shares insights on building complex product ecosystems and advice for aspiring PMs.
Deep Dive Analysis
15 Topic Outline
The Shift to Skills-First Hiring During COVID-19
LinkedIn's Evolution: From Cringy to Engaging Feed
LinkedIn's North Star: Connecting People to Economic Opportunity
Overview of LinkedIn's Talent Solutions Product Organization
Changes in the Modern Hiring Marketplace
The 'Open to Work' and 'Open to Internal Work' Features
Current Landscape and Tips for Landing a PM Role
Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile for Recruiters
Hari's First Product Review at LinkedIn and Learning from Failure
Building and Maintaining Complex Systems at LinkedIn
LinkedIn's Approach to Talent and Hiring Product Managers
Introduction to LinkedIn Learning and its Mission
Hari's Product Management Course and Key Lessons
Advice for Aspiring and Current Product Managers
Hari's Creative Side Projects and Building Philosophy
6 Key Concepts
Skills-First Hiring
This is an approach to hiring where a candidate's experiences are translated into a set of skills, allowing companies to identify potential hires based on capabilities rather than just job titles. This helps balance the job market by matching people with transferable skills to available roles, even if their previous job title was different.
LinkedIn's North Star
The overarching mission and guiding principle for all decisions at LinkedIn is 'connecting people to economic opportunity.' This mission helps clarify priorities and decision-making across the company's complex ecosystem of products and marketplaces.
Members First Value
This core value dictates that in any decision within LinkedIn's ecosystem, the focus should be on the member. This principle helps establish trust and guides decisions, especially when balancing the needs of different parts of the platform, such as job seekers versus recruiters.
RAPID Framework
A decision-making framework used at LinkedIn to clarify who is responsible for different aspects of a decision. It involves identifying the Recommender, those who must Agree, those who provide Input, and the single Decision-maker, ensuring clarity and accountability in complex situations.
Five-Day Alignment Rule
A rule at LinkedIn that holds managers accountable for resolving escalated issues or making decisions within five days. If an issue remains unresolved after this period, it is automatically escalated to the next level of management, ensuring timely unblocking and progress.
PM Skill Triangle
A mental model suggesting that great Product Managers possess three core skill sets: a 'Steven Spielberg type creator' (vision/creativity), data science (ability to analyze data and see patterns), and general management (leading teams, budgeting, understanding company operations). Exceptional PMs often excel on the 'edges' of this triangle, playing to their strengths rather than trying to be equally strong in all three.
9 Questions Answered
LinkedIn has focused on connecting people to economic opportunity by prioritizing content that fosters relationship connections, knowledge, and advice. Improved machine learning algorithms and Gen AI-assisted prompts are helping to surface more relevant and valuable content.
While the market has shifted from candidate-driven to employer-driven, the move to skills-based hiring and job seekers looking for roles based on values or interests are lasting changes. These new pathways for connecting talent are rebalancing the market in a different way.
'Open to Work' allows job seekers to signal their availability to recruiters, either secretly or publicly with a profile frame. Initially, there was a stigma around unemployment, but this changed during COVID-19, making the public signal more widely accepted and used.
PMs should focus on forming relationships, using 'open to work' signals, adding credentials and work products to their skills section, and zoning in on roles where they have relevant industry experience to differentiate themselves.
Job seekers should signal their interest in specific companies even without open roles, use the 'open to work' feature with detailed job preferences, and add evidence (like work products or recommendations) to their skills section to demonstrate capabilities.
LinkedIn uses frameworks like RAPID to clearly define decision-makers and stakeholders, and the 'Five-Day Alignment Rule' to ensure timely resolution of issues and prevent bottlenecks, all while continuously reinforcing the 'connecting people to economic opportunity' North Star.
LinkedIn Learning is a platform for professionals to acquire new skills, primarily through enterprise subscriptions. It aims to bridge skill gaps by providing high-quality courses from expert instructors, often filmed in professional studios, to help members connect to economic opportunity.
Aspiring PMs should understand their strengths within the 'PM skill triangle' (creator, data science, general management) and gravitate towards roles that leverage those strengths. He also advises seeking opportunities to work on products that people genuinely love, to understand the full path to successful product development.
PMs should embrace ownership of their products and actively drive their direction. Hari also encourages PMs to continuously 'build' things, whether professional or personal side projects, to keep their builder muscle strong and foster creativity.
24 Actionable Insights
1. Develop Systems Thinking
Cultivate the ability to see and understand entire systems and make decisions based on the whole, not just individual parts. This is a crucial and rare skill set for managing complex ecosystems and is highly valued in product leadership.
2. Align with Clear North Star
For product development, always align decisions and priorities with a clear North Star (e.g., “connecting people to economic opportunity” for LinkedIn). A clear North Star simplifies decision-making and ensures focus, especially in complex systems.
3. Take Ownership of Product
As a Product Manager, clearly understand and embrace your role to fully own your product, speak up about its direction, and drive it to the next level. Taking ownership attracts support and collaboration from others, making it easier to build and improve the product.
4. Continuously Build Side Projects
Regularly engage in building personal side projects or creative endeavors outside of work to maintain and strengthen your “builder muscle.” Building is at the heart of product management, and continuous practice prevents skill atrophy.
5. Work on Products People Love
Seek opportunities to work on products that genuinely resonate with users and that people love, to understand the full journey of creating successful products. Experiencing the success and user connection of a beloved product sets a high bar and provides invaluable lessons for a PM’s career.
6. Play to Your PM Strengths
Understand your core strengths as a PM (creator, data scientist, or general manager) and gravitate towards roles that leverage those specific strengths, rather than trying to be equally strong in all areas. Great PMs often excel at the “edges” of these skill sets, and focusing on your strengths can lead to greater success.
7. Validate New Ideas Rigorously
Use frameworks to validate new ideas by proving real-world need (e.g., “duct tape” solutions), prioritizing against acute pain points for a wide audience, and using data to validate. This ensures ideas are sound, address real problems, and are supported by evidence before significant investment.
8. Think in Growth Loops
When building products, design them with growth loops in mind, ensuring they have the inherent “fuel” to cascade and grow organically. This approach creates sustainable product growth and scalability.
9. Focus on Skills-Based Hiring
For job seekers, translate experiences into a set of skills; for recruiters, look for candidates based on skills rather than just traditional titles. This helps balance the marketplace and find suitable candidates who possess the necessary capabilities.
10. Add Credentials to LinkedIn Skills
For each skill listed on your LinkedIn profile or associated with a job application, add credentials such as work products, recommendations, or other evidence to demonstrate your proficiency. Recruiters actively look for these credentials, which help them recommend you to hiring managers and differentiate you from other candidates.
11. Optimize LinkedIn Skills Section
Pay close attention to and actively update the skills section on your LinkedIn profile, as its value is increasing in a skills-first hiring environment. While LinkedIn infers skills, explicitly listing and updating them ensures recruiters see your relevant capabilities.
12. Use ‘Open to Work’ Feature
Clearly mark yourself as “Open to Work” on LinkedIn to signal your intent to recruiters and the wider population. This is a high signal of intent and helps recruiters find you for relevant roles.
13. Detail Job Preferences in ‘Open to Work’
When using the “Open to Work” feature, provide detailed specifications about the particular kinds of jobs and roles you are seeking. More detailed intent ensures your profile is shown to the right recruiters and for the most relevant opportunities.
14. Signal Interest in Target Companies
On LinkedIn company pages, indicate your interest in a company even if no specific roles are open, so they receive a signal when new positions arise. This provides a high signal of intent to recruiters, potentially giving you an early advantage.
15. Form Relationships for Job Searching
Actively develop relationships with people in your target industry or companies, especially in a difficult job market. Relationships are always helpful for job opportunities and can be a differentiator.
16. Contact Hiring Managers Directly
Identify the hiring manager listed on job postings and proactively try to get in touch with them. This can be an effective way to make a direct connection, especially for senior roles.
17. Leverage Industry Experience for PM
When applying for PM roles, emphasize and zone in on positions where you have prior industry experience or a strong understanding of that industry. Industry knowledge can help you differentiate yourself from other candidates, especially if you lack specific functional PM experience.
18. Network for Senior Roles
For senior-level positions, focus on building long-term recruiting contacts and connecting with C-level individuals on LinkedIn, as direct applications are less common. Senior roles are often filled through recruitment and networking, rather than direct job applications.
19. Search Jobs by Values/Interests
When searching for jobs, consider filtering or looking for roles that align with your purpose or specific interests (e.g., AI), rather than just titles. This helps find roles that are a better fit and align with personal values, a growing trend in the job market.
20. Implement RAPID Decision Framework
Implement the RAPID framework (Recommender, Agree, Input, Decision-maker) to clarify roles in decision-making, ensuring a single decision-maker is identified. This helps manage complexity and ensures decisions are made quickly and clearly, especially in large, interconnected organizations.
21. Implement 5-Day Escalation Rule
Establish a rule where managers are accountable to resolve or escalate issues within five days, pushing unresolved items to the next level of leadership. This prevents blockages and ensures timely resolution of complex issues in an ecosystem.
22. Shorten Product Review Meetings
Experiment with significantly shortening product review meetings (e.g., to 15 minutes) to encourage quick problem statement articulation and design discussion, and prevent institutionalization. This increases efficiency, gets to clarity faster, and avoids lengthy, document-heavy processes.
23. Explore LinkedIn Learning
Check out LinkedIn Learning for professional skill development, especially if your company provides access, as it’s a valuable resource often overlooked by individuals. It offers high-quality, professionally tailored content to help individuals acquire new skills for career advancement.
24. Understand Current PM Job Market
Acknowledge that the PM job market is currently difficult, with tech hiring down significantly and PM roles trending below other tech functions. This context helps set realistic expectations and informs job search strategy.
6 Key Quotes
If you're going to go in and, you know, you only have one more shot, just do something you believe in, right, and kind of make sure it kind of works.
Hari Srinivasan
As long as you get that North Star in, you know, ahead of you, you're going to be just fine.
Hari Srinivasan
I think that the job market is rebalancing, but it's being done. The pathways are being done in a very different way that seems to be maybe a change that holds through these ups and downs, and that'll be very interesting to see.
Hari Srinivasan
I've actually never seen a great PM who's in the center of it. I find the great PMs live on the edges.
Hari Srinivasan
I think that one thing I've really found was really helpful is I was lucky to have, I was on the first team that did a hybrid kind of SUV in the US... And being able to work on something that people loved, like really loved early on and see what that felt like and looked like and that success was, it kind of created a bar for what I would hope my products could do.
Hari Srinivasan
I argue that the only thing I've ever been good at in my life is just building things and creating things.
Hari Srinivasan