It's not just a new name:  LinkedIn Talent Advantage offers some cool new functionality that should be of particular interest to companies seeking to use LinkedIn for sourcing and employer branding.  FYI, Talent Advantage includes: LinkedIn Recruiter (candidate search across the entire LinkedIn network, multi-recruiter team collaboration/project management, and related communication tools), Jobs Network (targeted job posting and viral distribution), Talent Direct (highly targeted InMail campaigns), Custom Company Profiles and Employer Advertising (targeted online text and display ads).

LinkedIn gave JobMachine a sneak peak last week at what was released today, but I'll focus on a couple that Glenn and I were most excited about.

·         From an employer branding perspective, the just-launched Custom Company Profiles are worth a look.  It lets you showcase certain recruiters by function (as well as other employee profiles), insert a streaming video, poll question, special links, etc.  The best part is that you can have different versions of page content that only display desired elements based on the industry, job function, level, location, etc., of the potential job-seeker who visits your company's page.  See Burger King Corporation as an example of custom profiles out there today.  For those of you at staffing firms, note that Robert Half International is also using Talent Advantage as a platform to find client sales prospects.

·         From the sourcing side, TalentMatch generates LinkedIn member profile recommendations geared to your openings within 48 hours of posting your job on LinkedIn and lets you contact them, as well as send job notifications to people in your first and second degree networks to get the word out virally to spur more referrals.

BTW, a few interesting stats about LinkedIn:  Of its 35 million members, 530,000 are recruiters.  The network is growing by 2 million members monthly, or about one new member per second!  The geographic split is about 50/50 for the USA vs. rest of world.  Over 900 companies are using at least some paid components of the Talent Advantage platform (this represents thousands of recruiters, since many companies have purchased multiple seats).