New software helps users land dream job

Finding your dream job just got a lot easier, thanks to a new software developed by computer scientists at the University of California, Santa Barbara, which uses LinkedIn network to guide your career.

LinkedVis, the new software explores the information in users' LinkedIn networks and then recommends it to companies.

The software works by scanning the users' network for people whose career path, skill set and qualifications resemble that of the user. The software then ranks those people in order of similarity to the user.

In the last step, the software uses the current position and company to recommend career paths for the user.

With the help of the software users can also explore  ''what if'' scenarios – for example, how getting another degree or added qualification would affect their prospects.

So far, the software has only been tested on small amounts of offline LinkedIn data provided by 27 users.

According to  John O'Donovan, one of the developers, he had had meetings with LinkedIn's chief engineer about the system, and the company was ''extremely interested'' in it.