As LinkedIn’s chief product officer (CPO), Tomer Cohen oversees the groups liable for product administration, person expertise and design, and buyer operations. His journey to his C-suite function got here after admiring the corporate from afar.
Cohen moved to Silicon Valley in 2008 from Israel to check at Stanford College. He attended a lecture discussing the ability of social networks within the engineering faculty with entrepreneurs together with Mark Zuckerberg and LinkedIn co-founder Reid Hoffman. Whereas Fb was the hyped platform, Cohen remembers being one of many folks within the viewers who was wowed by the potential energy of an expert social community.
“My LinkedIn fandom began there,” he tells Pc Weekly on the agency’s London workplace close to Farringdon Station. “I joined the corporate later. I ran a startup proper after faculty after which labored for a enterprise capital agency as an entrepreneur in residence. I joined LinkedIn after having a dialog with the one that was in my present function at the moment. We talked about how we may construct LinkedIn as a cellular product.”
When he joined in 2012, the LinkedIn platform was related to the desktop. Cohen had already constructed cellular merchandise within the startup group and noticed the expansion alternative. “We talked about my imaginative and prescient and the way LinkedIn may very well be a cellular product. I used to be requested, ‘Why don’t you come right here and construct it?’ And that was the beginning of my LinkedIn journey,” he says.
Cohen led the transformation from desktop to cellular platforms after which shifted to work on the corporate’s feed and engagement-focused merchandise. After working in senior roles within the client merchandise division, he grew to become chief product officer in June 2020. After 13 years working for the corporate, Cohen remains to be enthusiastic about what’s to come back.
“The rationale I nonetheless love working right here, and I’m nonetheless so bullish concerning the firm, is similar as once I noticed Reid Hoffman again in 2008, which is the ability of connecting folks to the skilled community – that functionality can open great alternatives,” he says. “I can present you the way all the pieces we’re constructing aligns with that function.”
Exploring new alternatives
There have been many adjustments since Cohen joined the corporate. LinkedIn now has a couple of billion members. The forms of engagement on the platform have modified, too. He says folks use the app as a approach to develop their careers and their companies.
“Now you make a residing on LinkedIn speaking about your craft,” he says. “There’s been an evolution over time. It’s been constructed brick by brick. However in some ways, it was the concept LinkedIn will be your superpower – and my job, as CPO, is that will help you expose that superpower and make it easy to know how LinkedIn can assist you obtain your outcomes.”
Cohen simplified the product as he developed the platform’s cellular expertise. Then, as he seemed to encourage engagement, he centered on serving to folks share data simply and construct a group. This decade-long expertise has concerned serving to LinkedIn remodel from what was perceived as a job website into one thing deeper.
“LinkedIn will be your superpower – and my job, as CPO, is that will help you expose that superpower and make it easy to know how LinkedIn can assist you obtain your outcomes”
Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn
“Jobs are a giant a part of LinkedIn, and rightfully so,” he says. “However the concept you are able to do extra on the platform grew during the last decade. While you ask members at the moment how they consider LinkedIn, many will say, ‘It’s my every day work software.’ That wasn’t the case prior to now, and I’m happy with how we’ve made LinkedIn a productiveness software that may assist you all through the day versus one thing transactional you utilize each few years whenever you’re in search of jobs.”
Cohen factors to some essential product developments. His staff hung out and sources honing the person feed expertise. Additionally they centered on growing pages to permit organisations to create skilled experiences on LinkedIn that focus extra on updates and content material, and fewer on fundamental data.
These product developments have been tailor-made by step by step studying what works for members. Cohen says a profitable CPO thinks rigorously about the best way to flip an organization’s imaginative and prescient right into a product technique. He provides the instance of particular person feed experiences at LinkedIn and the way his staff explored how the feed may assist folks create new alternatives.
“CPOs should translate the corporate’s imaginative and prescient into worth and develop the product technique behind that course of. So we measure success by issues like, ‘Was an individual capable of construct affect? Had been they capable of get a job? Are they getting engagements?’”
He provides an instance from his skilled life: “I met considered one of my professors from Stanford six months in the past, and he stated, ‘I began sharing issues repeatedly on LinkedIn as a result of any person informed me this might be a great way to get my concepts out. Now I’m getting approached for talking engagements.’”
Collapsing the stack
Cohen moved into the CPO function through the coronavirus pandemic. He says the recent working kinds that boomed, corresponding to hybrid and distant approaches, are nonetheless creating an affect at the moment.
“Immediately, you will get a job wherever as a result of you’ll be able to work from wherever,” he says. “That’s a giant change. We’re seeing unprecedented change when it comes to employment. The time fixed of change is way higher than the time fixed of response, which suggests you don’t have the luxurious of getting playbooks to adapt to the world of labor. And proper now, whether or not or not professionals are pondering of adjusting their function, their job is altering.”
Cohen refers to LinkedIn analysis that means 70% of the talents required for jobs at the moment will change by 2030. “That’s staggering,” he says. “That’s simply four-and-a-half years, and that’s not loads of time. As CPO, I have to take into consideration the best way to assist members navigate change efficiently.”
One of many key accelerators for change is synthetic intelligence (AI). Cohen says expertise all the time generates new options to beat challenges at a private {and professional} degree, particularly in a giant enterprise like LinkedIn. Nonetheless, he suggests the dimensions of transformation with AI is totally different, and folks should alter shortly and successfully.
Cohen refers to an instance from his division. Full Stack Builders (FSB) launched final yr and makes use of AI in product improvement at LinkedIn. Somewhat than a sequence of discrete duties, corresponding to designing and engineering, product improvement is undertaken by one skilled assisted by AI companies, together with instruments that take care of coding help and product administration.
“Now we have a possibility to break down the stack again and say, ‘Hey, improvement requires an thought and creativity, however it additionally wants different issues like, how do you code your product, how do you spec it, and the way do you design it?’ We see with FSB that many issues will be accomplished with AI, permitting you to push out the frontier of product improvement,” he says.
“While you zoom out, we empower folks to construct what they need. And, in our organisation, we’re permitting folks to begin doing that work. We’re experimenting with the thought you could now work full stack. So, you’re not employed just for a particular function. As an alternative, you’ll be able to work throughout the expertise to construct a product, which was not the case earlier than.”
As an alternative of working with between 5 and 10 groups in a number of features, a full-stack product developer makes use of rising expertise to break down a posh, multi-disciplinary course of right into a streamlined exercise accomplished by one particular person. The corporate powers this method with proprietary expertise, Microsoft companies and a spread of enormous language fashions.
“Now I can use AI to say, ‘Hey, right here’s my spec. That is what I wish to construct. Are you able to create it for me? Are you able to design it for me?’ After which, from design, you’ll be able to take it to code. You possibly can have a full design. The expertise empowers our folks to construct with out the friction in the midst of the method.”
Implementing agentic companies
Cohen says this AI-enabled method goals to construct agility into the event course of to create new, high-quality merchandise. He recognises introducing rising expertise can contain a big tradition shift for professionals who use these instruments every day. Nonetheless, at LinkedIn, utilizing AI have to be par for the course.
“It’s everybody’s job,” he says. “Now we have an unbelievable IT staff. Their job is partly to carry the most effective instruments to LinkedIn that meet our norms and governance. Our builders are excited to make sure they’re all the time in search of the most effective instruments on the market proper now. On the similar time, they’re guaranteeing these instruments are a part of our DNA – that they’re reliable, there aren’t any privateness and safety considerations, and so they work nicely inside our stack.”
We’re experimenting with the thought you could now work full stack. So, you’re not employed just for a particular function. As an alternative, you’ll be able to work throughout the expertise to construct a product Tomer Cohen, LinkedIn
As LinkedIn continues to make use of AI to hone its inside working practices and exterior companies, what is going to these advances imply for the corporate and its members? Cohen suggests the endpoint is personalisation. Over the subsequent 24 months, he expects the corporate to develop extra tailor-made instruments for customers.
“What you want from LinkedIn is totally different from what I would like,” he says. “So, how will you give somebody the most effective, personalised expertise after they open the app? That functionality requires us to construct a lot sooner and with increased high quality, so that you’re getting the expertise you need fairly than the final expertise we’re constructing throughout our app.”
In late 2024, LinkedIn launched its first AI agent to assist recruiters on the platform work extra successfully. Hiring Assistant is designed to imagine a number of recruitment duties, from managing administrative duties to sourcing and fascinating with candidates. Cohen says one of many causes he’s within the UK is to assist launch the service. He says these early explorations present the potential energy of agentic AI.
“With that agentic expertise, we are able to go market section by section, and also you’ll have an agent to finish work in your behalf,” he says. “The AI is doing all the pieces – discovering, sourcing, reaching out and vetting candidates. Individuals utilizing the expertise already see between 15% and 47% effectivity positive aspects. This expertise is simply making work extra environment friendly.”
