LinkedIn is a professional networking site where you can connect with friends and colleagues to find career or company opportunities. Users can create a profile detailing their academic and work experience. Last week, Linkedin rolled out a feature to target college students and help them decide on career paths called Career Explorer.

The chief executive officer commented on their press page saying,  ”LinkedIn is about connecting talent with opportunity at massive scale. Career Explorer is the latest example of how we make that possible by providing one of our fastest growing demographics, students and recent college graduates, unique and valuable insights enabling them to develop the optimal career path.”

The press page also outlines the key functionalities of Career Explorer:

• Career Mapping: Explore the paths taken by professionals in various careers. Students can also save and create multiple career paths with Career Explorer.
• Connections: See who in your network can help advance your career within a certain field or company, and meet potential mentors.
• Statistics: Learn interesting facts and statistics about potential professions.
• Jobs: Career Explorer has a module that shows you not only relevant job openings, but also how you can use your network to secure or find more information about those positions.
• Follow Potential Employers: Career Explorer highlights the LinkedIn Company Profiles of potential employers. You can then “follow” those companies and receive updates about them in your news feed. The updates include job postings at the company as well as notifications when people get hired or leave the company.

Career Path Explorer has only been rolled out to 60 universities, but will expand to most universities eventually. The company is hoping that targeting the largest group of potential job seekers, college students, will help grow the LinkedIn community. What are your thoughts? Do you use LinkedIn?

[Linkedin Career Explorer via TechCrunch]