Just days after South Africa’s PlayStation distributor confirmed the launch of the PS5 Slim in April, we’re hearing news of Sony’s next big thing: the PS5 ‘Pro’. This isn’t coming from Sony directly, of course. It’s coming, as everything that counts as ‘news’ these days does, from an unofficial source (it was leaked) — by YouTuber Moore’s Law is Dead. And later confirmed by Insider Gaming’s Tom Henderson.

Oh, and it’ll be arriving sometime in the holiday shuffle — to better target those Christmas wishlists — as long as it pumps out enough first-party titles, that is. Good thing Nintendo stood aside this year, huh?

Anyone familiar with the scene knows who Tom Henderson is, and that he doesn’t mess around. He verified that the documents seen in Moore’s Law is Dead’s video are the real thing, coming from a PlayStation developer portal — with the documents hitting relevant developers a few weeks back.

We won’t bore you with all the nitty-gritty details. This is a PS5 Pro, after all. It’s a PlayStation with hardware befitting the four-year gap between itself and the original console — one that’s reportedly being kitted out to best suit any customers picking up GTA VI when it drops next year thanks to its improved GPU that’ll apparently render up to three times faster.

A more consistent frame rate is expected at 4K resolutions, and there’s talk that its ray tracing capabilities could be three (or even four) times faster than the previous iteration. PlayStation Spectral Super Resolution Upscaling (PSSR) has been rumoured to use Sony’s machine learning — similar to AMD’s FSR or Nvidia’s DLSS image upscaling features to possibly boost graphics up to 8K.

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Let’s settle this on LinkedIn…

Anyone against the idea of starving themselves to death probably has a LinkedIn account, perhaps against their will. Microsoft’s social platform has long been a place to go in search of jobs, or employees to fill those jobs — with everyone patting themselves on the back in the process. Now, the platform is looking to branch into gaming.

That might sound like we’re pulling your leg, but it’s true. The billion-strong userbase will soon be treated to at least three of the company’s in-house games; akin to the surge of simple internet games like Wordle or something from neal.fun. They’re called Queens, Inference, and Crossclimb. It isn’t Linkle or something equally Wordle-y, so the NYT should leave them be.

The obvious implementation would be to allow employees to compete against one another, or against other companies. And, according to app researcher Nima Owji, that’s exactly what’s happening.

LinkedIn later confirmed in a message to TechCrunch that it was indeed working on a selection of games, though failed to provide any sort of release window. “We’re playing with adding puzzle-based games within the LinkedIn experience to unlock a bit of fun, deepen relationships, and hopefully spark the opportunity for conversations,” the spokesperson said in a message to TechCrunch.

It’s… a strange move. A website aimed at professionals, would-be or otherwise, succumbing to the pull of time-killing games — designed to kill company time? We hope it all works out.

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Sony hits the pause button on VR

Virtual reality (VR) isn’t for everyone, apparently. You’d think Sony, a company where the bucks flow out of every orifice, would find a way to make it work. But if the rumours are true, the Japanese conglomerate has hit the pause button on PSVR 2 production and begun stockpiling the headsets thanks to declining sales quarter after quarter. Yikes.

We’re just spitballing here, but we reckon the R15,000 price tag — or the fact that it requires a PS5 to work — might have something to do with the declining sales. Don’t even get us started on the lacklustre support for games since its debut, riding on the Horizon Call of the Mountain high ever since. The closing of the PlayStation London division, reportedly working on VR titles, hasn’t helped.

The company’s saving grace could be its decision to allow PC support for the PSVR 2 headset. Or it might continue to sink deeper into this mess, as more people flock towards the similarly priced Meta Quest 3.

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Google’s Gemini on Apple iPhones

AI might be coming to Apple’s iPhones sooner, rather than later. That isn’t thanks to a massive push to get Apple’s in-house AI out sooner, but because of a possible deal that’ll put Google’s Gemini engine on Apple’s devices, according to Bloomberg’s sources familiar with the matter. If the reports are true, Apple’s also explored the possibility of plugging OpenAI’s engine into the development of its next phone.

Whatever the case, we won’t be hearing about it until June at the earliest at Apple’s annual Worldwide Developers Conference. It seems that nothing has yet been agreed upon between Apple and Google — with no ideas of how a partnership would work, or how the AI would be introduced to the devices.

Whether this will affect Apple’s long-rumoured plans to develop its own artificial intelligence in-house has yet to be seen. Just last month, Apple CEO Tim Cook was going on about the massive potential of AI, and that the company was investing heavily in the area in general.

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Have you ever looked at LinkedIn and thought “Wow! Wouldn’t this be great if it were on Elon Musk’s $44 billion platform, X.com?” We didn’t think so. The eccentric billionaire is doing it anyway, with the job search feature going live for all users on the web version of the site, following the feature’s beta back in August.

Android and iOS users aren’t being left out, either. The company said that the feature would get mobile functionally “soon” but didn’t delve deeper into what the feature might look like there.

The web version is up and running, however. Like every awkward high school dance, someone has to get the ball rolling before everyone else will follow. Unsurprisingly, it was Elon Musk and his mass of companies that got that honour, with job listings currently listed for SpaceX, Tesla, and Neuralink, as we’ll as Grok’s parent x.ai.

Despite Musk’s promises that “we will make sure that the X competitor to LinkedIn is cool,” the feature appears to be barebones out the gate. Users can browse through the jobs listed, but you won’t be sending in applications through the app directly – even for job offerings at X.com. Instead, they’ll be redirected to third-party sites to fill in and send out their applications.

In the year or so since Musk bought Twitter (for more than double what it’s currently worth), the platform’s become known for its ‘act now, think later’ strategy, with the only ideas seemingly coming from Musk’s stream of consciousness. We’re doubtful X.com’s LinkedIn competitor will remain barebones, but it’s not a good impression for the very people the company is trying to steal away from the gold standard.

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Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 promises mid-range greatness

It might feel like Qualcomm’s bread and butter is its high-end products – like the recently announced Snapdragon 8 Gen 3 – that’ll only ever see the inside of Samsung’s flagships and the likes. In truth, it’s that middle-ground that actually affects the masses, and the company’s latest Snapdragon 7 Gen 3 is looking to be a king amongst paupers.

Qualcomm hasn’t given up on plastering AI on just about every inch of the SD 7 Gen 3’s announcement, either. The SoC will provide “exhilarating on-device AI,” alongside all the usual upgrades like boosts to its gaming prowess, “a creativity-charged camera,” and of course, 5G.

In this post-AI world, it makes sense that Qualcomm is cashing in on the hype before it goes stale. The company is promising that the SoC’s components “deliver across-the-board advancements to ignite on-device AI,” significantly speeding up generative AI applications in the process. So much so that it’ll be able to create Stable Diffusion images in a second from a text prompt.

It’s not just all about the AI, though. It’s touting a Kyro CPU that’s 15% faster than the last generation, with a 2.6GHz peak speed, a 50% bump in GPU performance and “incredible power efficiency,” that’ll at least save your battery from all that AI strain. If all the nitty-gritty details interest you, check out the SD 7 Gen 3’s spec sheet right here.

Qualcomm’s already announced a couple of early adopters, including Honor and Vivo, though which phones they’ll be populating will only be announced later this month.

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Baldur’s Gate 3 goes physical

After sweeping eight nominations at this year’s Game Awards – tied with Alan Wake 2 – Larian Studios has announced that its genre-defining RPG, Baldur’s Gate 3, is finally getting a physical release. Unfortunately, it won’t be seeing the light of day inside those plain-old PS5 and Xbox cases, but instead will be sold as a Deluxe Edition.

That announcement appeared next to the studio’s other big news that the game would be getting a release on Xbox at all, though neither the Deluxe Edition nor Xbox release dates have been unveiled just yet. We know it’ll land sometime in early 2024 – probably alongside each other – but beyond that…

The Deluxe Edition appearing on the PlayStation 5 will contain two discs like it’s a pre-2000 Metal Gear Solid game. Xbox players are getting the brunt of the “f***-ton” of discs being released, needing three discs to make the game playable. The two (or three) discs stand next to another three discs that’ll hold the soundtrack, a cloth world map, a Mind Flayer poster, and a whole load of stickers.

Larian Studios has also avoided any buyer’s remorse by offering the game’s Digital Deluxe Edition content as part of the physical release. All that for only $80 (R1,470)? Sign us up. If you’re looking to join the list, you’ll need to go through the studio’s dedicated online store for the time being, with no official word on when retailers can get their hands on the Deluxe Edition.

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Annapurna Interactive is dipping into South Africa

You’ve probably heard of Annapurna Interactive before. 24 Bit Games on the other hand? Probably not. That’s because it’s a) a South African game company and b) focuses its efforts on co-developing titles such as the superb Broforce or one of Annapurna’s many titles such as Cocoon. In a bid to hoard all of 24 Bit’s talent, Annapurna has completed an acquisition of the company – its first time doing so.

“Annapurna has been working with 24 Bit for many years, and we value not only the caliber (sic) of their work but their team as well,” said Deborah Mars, Co-Head of Annapurna Interactive. “They’ve always shared our commitment to quality, and by taking our partnership to the next level we feel like anything is possible,” noting how the acquisition would help expand the studio’s development team.

If it means we’ll be getting more games like the aforementioned Cocoon or Outer Wilds, Journey, and Stray, you won’t hear us complaining.

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But AI, that new and shiny object, isn’t easy or cheap to set up and operate so it’ll be reserved for LinkedIn Premium subscribers. Since a Premium sub will set you back at least R450/m, what Microsoft has in the pipe had better be good.

Artificially LinkedIn

The new AI tool, like most of the functions of LinkedIn, is designed to make finding work easier for users – particularly those who feel up to giving Microsoft money every month. In addition to giving (paid) users access to AI-generated profile content and smarter messages to the folks doing the hiring, Microsoft’s newest functions will let prospective employees know more about their odds before anyone has even glanced at their CV.

Specifically, it’ll let users know which jobs they’d be best suited for after summing up the sometimes lengthy job descriptions on the platform. It’ll also suggest which work experience to emphasise for a prospective role and offer advice on how to present profiles to make them more attractive to the upper HR types.

Read More: Pointers to polish your LinkedIn profile

The intent, according to LinkedIn’s Tomer Cohen, is to move “…from what used to be just seeing a job and feeling insecure to being able to make tremendous progress in just one session”. But the new AI is seeing a limited launch, at first, that’ll be confined to Premium subscribers. If that’s you, our new robot overlords may well be instrumental in netting you your next job.

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The new features, based on OpenAI‘s technology, will enhance the site’s marketing, recruiting, and learning capabilities and complement the AI tools already available on the platform.

Microsoft, the owner of LinkedIn, is clearly looking to leverage its partnership with OpenAI and get even more value from the billions of dollars they’ve invested in the company so far.

Enhanced LinkedIn Ad Campaigns

The first of these new AI tools will strike fear into the hearts of anyone currently involved in digital marketing: it’s called Accelerate, and it enhances an already-existing LinkedIn service called Campaign Manager, which can be used to launch ad campaigns on LinkedIn.

By “enhance”, we mean Accelerate can generate ad campaigns by itself, including all text and imagery. It even suggests the most appropriate audiences to target. In short, Accelerate automates the creation and targeting of ad campaigns. This means even inexperienced marketers will shortly be able to roll out LinkedIn campaigns, quite possibly with very little supervision required.

Of course, human intervention is still needed at this stage of AI’s development to get the full benefit of everything Accelerate offers, so marketers aren’t completely out of a job. Yet. Job concerns aside, this sounds like a cool addition to LinkedIn’s AI-powered capabilities. And who knows, maybe it’ll result in higher-quality ad campaigns instead of fewer marketers.

Enhanced Recruitment on LinkedIn

The second new AI tool being rolled out is called Recruiter 2024, and it’s meant to help recruiters do an even better job of finding suitable candidates by using natural language queries. Behind the scenes, Recruiter 2024’s AI will take simple instructions to do things like “find WordPress specialists” and narrow the list of potential candidates into a few more relevant to the searcher’s requirements.

That might lead to candidates being presented that don’t appear, on the surface, to meet the recruiter’s requirements but who are relevant to the role thanks to the AI’s insights into their background and capabilities that aren’t immediately clear to a human observer. Neat!

Enhanced Business Advice

The third tool is LinkedIn’s AI-powered “Coaching Experience”, a new chatbot that people can talk to and ask business-related questions of. It’s intended to act as a virtual business coach, able to answer questions like “How can I be a better leader?” and “Please share insights on effective strategies for managing and motivating remote teams”.

The chatbot also suggests relevant courses inside the LinkedIn Learning platform, connecting users with materials that could benefit them based on the questions asked.

The chatbot’s answers are reportedly tailored to the user, so it clearly uses some AI black magic in the background, analysing whatever information LinkedIn grants access to, to be as helpful as possible. Also neat but a little scary, too. But then, with any new technology that has great potential to disrupt the status quo, that’s to be expected.

Not available immediately

These new AI features will not be available to everyone immediately, as Microsoft is slowly rolling them out in phases, starting with select users in North America. Eventually, all LinkedIn users will be able to use these new tools, so keep an eye out if you’re a regular user of the platform.

If you’re a marketer reading this with a sense of dread, don’t panic – LinkedIn’s new Accelerate tool will likely end up being just another arrow in your Quiver of Awesome and won’t be replacing you anytime soon.

And even if someone’s current employer tries, they will shortly learn the error of their ways and come running back to you, tail between their legs, as there’s far more to marketing than just the tools used to grab eyeballs.

Image by Nick Youngson

That’s where online platforms can really help. LinkedIn, for all its quirks, is actually quite useful when it comes to getting your professional profile ‘out there’, because it is pretty much ‘Facebook for Professionals’. But more importantly, LinkedIn offers the added bonus of giving you access to companies that you might want to work at someday, as well as any open positions they are advertising.

The trick is to get recruiters to notice you, and fortunately, there are things you can do to your LinkedIn profile that can land it in front of the right eyes (in addition to doing things like letting AI help you draft cover letters for job applications).

This article will cover some of those things, with the aim of giving you the tools you need to get noticed and, potentially, a foot in the door at your next gig.

On to the tips!

Use the Jobs tool

When looking for jobs, engaging with any online platforms with sections labelled “Jobs” is wise, and that’s exactly what LinkedIn offers. At the top of your LinkedIn page, you’ll see a briefcase icon called “Jobs”. It’s here that LinkedIn will show you positions that are currently available that more or less match your current profile. You can refine your search using the search box, and you can set up job alerts that will notify you when employment matching your ideal criteria becomes available.

Show that you’re ‘Open to work’

A neat way to tell the LinkedIn world that you’re available to be hired is to set your profile to ‘Open to work’. That way, recruiters and the people in your network can tell just by looking at your profile pic that you’re looking for something new.

To do that, follow these steps:

1. Login to LinkedIn
2. Click on the ‘Me’ icon at the top of the screen
3. Click View Profile
4. Where you see ‘Open to’ on that screen, click on it and set it to ‘Finding a new job’.
5. Specify when you’re available, the job descriptions you’re interested in, the type of employment you’re looking for, and set the visibility of your quest for a new job.

If you choose to make your job seeking visible to all LinkedIn members (as opposed to recruiters only), your profile picture will have a little green strip on it that says #Opentowork.

If you have a current employer, maybe choose Recruiters only, as that will reduce the chances of your current employer finding out you’re looking around. #justsaying

Join LinkedIn groups specific to the industry you work in

Find and join groups that have anything to do with the industry you work in. Browse those groups regularly, post questions, engage with other members, and make yourself known. Keep an eye out for job openings posted by other group members. This is a virtual way to network yourself, and it could well pay off in the future.

Get endorsed

When others endorse your skills, that reflects well on you and makes you more desirable for recruiters. It’s the difference between you saying “Hey I can do this!” and someone else saying, “This person is really good at doing this!”. The more people that endorse your skills on LinkedIn, the more you appear like an employee a company should want to hire.

To do this, all you need to do is ask people you’ve worked with in the past to endorse you on the platform. Easy!

Add new skills

Companies want to know what you can do for them, so keeping your list of skills updated is incredibly important to any job search on the platform. The magic number of skills you should have on your profile is “more than five”. Recruiters use skills to narrow their search for their ideal candidate, so if your skills match what they’re looking for, you’re golden.

Follow the companies you want to work for

This seems like a no-brainer, but we’ll say it anyway: find companies you think you might like to work for and follow them and their key people on LinkedIn. And do the same you’re doing with the industry groups you’re already following: engage by posting comments on any content they post, and like their news stories. The aim is to make yourself known and possibly have someone from the company click on your profile to learn more about you.

Add a professional photo and a nice background photo to your profile

As with other people-finding platforms (*cough* Tinder *cough*), profiles without a photo of you are about as useful as a government ethics committee. Be sure your profile has a professional headshot or, failing that, a presentable selfie.

A nice touch that could give your profile the edge is an attractive background to go behind your headshot. Find (or create) an attractive image with the magic dimensions of 1584 x 396 pixels, and a magic file size of less than 8MB, and add it to your profile by clicking the Edit button at the top right of your profile page. Here, you can crop the image you’ve chosen so that it fits if you can’t find one with the exact dimensions above.

Keep adding connections

“It’s not who you are, it’s who you know” is right on the money when it comes to finding work. To keep your network full of people who might know of an opportunity, or who know of someone who knows about an opportunity, or know of a person in a company you like who knows people looking for someone like you, you should keep adding connections to your LinkedIn profile. It could be your way of getting a foot in the door somewhere.

The world is your oyster

There are more things you could do, but these pointers alone should be enough to elevate your chances of being noticed.

As lame as LinkedIn can seem sometimes, it’s also pretty useful when it comes to things like finding work and making new business connections. Don’t underestimate the power those connections have to connect you to your next gig, and never discount the chance of the perfect job landing in your lap as a direct result of the work you put into your profile.

And, lastly, don’t give up. Perseverance is the key to any successful job search, and as long as you’re consistently putting in the effort, you’ll find what you’re looking for sooner or later.

We wish you all the best! May your profile polishing bear fruit!

Now, a growing number of people have noticed this trend and are actively making an effort to resist it.

Anecdotally, a case can be made for quitting social media, and there are myriad reasons why someone might want to. But is there evidence that doing so is good for you in the long term?

Drivers for quitting

Although there are too many social media platforms to name, most people tend to think of the “big five”: Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube and TikTok.

Research has found people have various reasons for quitting one or more of these apps. Many quit over concerns about negative impacts on their mental and physical health. For example, studies have shown adolescent girls in particular can experience negative body image as a result of viewing manipulated selfies on Instagram.

People also choose to quit due to disliking ads, feeling like they’re wasting time, or if they’re worried about their privacy. The question then is: does quitting social media resolve these concerns?

Read More: Food for thought: How your mindset can make healthy food more alluring on social media

Mixed research outcomes

It’s difficult to determine whether there are clear and lasting benefits to quitting social media – and a look at the research explains why.

One 2020 study found people who had quit social media saw improvements in their close relationships, and were pleased to be free of comparison with others. But some also said they missed the informational and entertainment aspects of it.

In a 2018 study, researchers assessed the psychological state of 143 American undergraduates before randomly assigning one group a daily ten-minute limit for Facebook, Instagram and Snapchat, per platform. Three weeks later, those who limited their social media use showed significantly lower levels of loneliness and depression. However, there was no significant effect on anxiety, self-esteem or wellbeing.

And in one 2019 study with 78 participants, half were asked to take a one-week break from Facebook and Instagram. To the researchers’ surprise, the users in this group who were generally active on social media experienced less positive psychological effects than those in the control group.

With research findings painting several different pictures, it’s safe to say our relationship with social media – and how it affects us – is very complex.

Research constraints

There appear to be no published studies that have assessed the long-term impacts of permanently quitting social media. This is probably because it’s difficult to find participants who will agree to be randomly assigned the task of dropping social media forever.

One important consideration is that a percentage of individuals who quit social media will eventually go back. Reasons for returning include feeling left out, fearing loss of connections, wanting to regain access to interesting or useful information, feeling social pressure to rejoin, or simply feeling that quitting wasn’t the right choice.

Even if researchers do find a large enough group of people willing to quit social media for good, conducting long-term follow-ups would be highly resource-intensive. Beyond that, it would be difficult to figure out how much of a participant’s increase (or decrease) in life satisfaction is due to quitting social media, and not other factors.

As such, there’s currently no evidence that quitting social media comes with concrete long-term benefits. And in the short term, results are mixed.

To quit, or not to quit?

However, that doesn’t mean quitting (for a short or long period) wouldn’t be beneficial for some people. It’s likely that any potential benefits will depend on the individual doing the quitting, and why they’re doing it.

For instance, consensus that does emerge from the research is that the way you use social media plays a significant role in how negative or positive your experience is. By using social media mindfully, users can minimise potential harms while retaining the benefits.

For some, it may only be one platform causing unease. If you strongly dislike Instagram’s tendency to be hyper-focused on people’s private lives, then you could simply stop using Instagram.

Another technique is to curate your social media feeds by engaging only with content you find useful and positive. For instance, many young women take steps to avoid seeing perfect bodies all day on their social media.

If you’re still wondering whether quitting might be good for you, the simplest way to find out is to experiment and do it.

Take a break from one or more types of social media. After some time ask yourself whether the benefits seem worth it to you. If the answer is “yes”, make the break permanent.

• John Malouff is an Associate Professor, School of Behavioural, Cognitive and Social Sciences, University of New England
• This article first appeared on The Conversation

The new features come after Microsoft’s social network revealed a spike in malicious activity in its latest transparency report. It blocked 58 million accounts between July and December last year, an increase of 22 million spam accounts blocked in the previous six months.

Read More: A huge LinkedIn study just showed which connections are better when searching for a job

As a remedy, the platform plans to verify accounts and jobs being advertised to protect job seekers from possible scams. It has multiple verification options, including sending a code to a company’s email address or verifying through CLEAR, a system that requires US company credentials for verification. Non-US companies will need to use other certification methods. It says it is also expanding access to more free verification tools.

“When you see verifications on job posts, that means there is information that has been verified as authentic by the job poster, LinkedIn, or one of our partners,” notes the platform in a blog post.

Companies that are advertising jobs will be required to display more detail about the actual company and the job being posted.

LinkedIn will also give warnings for messages that appear to be scams.

“We may warn you about messages that ask you to take the conversation to another platform because that can be a sign of a scam. These warnings will also give you the choice to report the content without letting the sender know,” said LinkedIn in a post last year when it initially announced the features.

If you live in South Africa, where unemployment is skyrocketing and scams have become as familiar as load shedding, this feature could protect job seekers from various crimes. You’ve probably heard of prospective employees who are asked to pay a fee to secure an interview or worse, job seekers who are invited to deserted buildings where they’re subjected to a range of gruesome crimes.

Read More: LinkedIn’s AI will help draft your next job-hunting cover letter

LinkedIn is gradually rolling out its new features. In the meantime, here are some tips from the platform on how to avoid getting scammed while job hunting: Navigating your job search with new features that keep you safe on LinkedIn

Source: LinkedIn

LinkedIn has probably noticed the questionable writing between job seekers and potential bosses on its platform. The professional social media platform announced this week that it’s testing an AI-driven tool that writes cover letters for job seekers.

LinkedIn to the future

“Using generative AI with information from your profile, the hiring manager’s profile, the job description, and the company of interest, we create a highly personalized draft message to get a conversation started,” said Ora Levit, senior director at LinkedIn.

Read More: A huge LinkedIn study just showed which connections are better when searching for a job

It’s not going to do all the work for you. The company says job-seekers should review and customise the draft created by the AI by adding their own voice… and so they actually remember exactly what was written they eventually make it to the interview.

LinkedIn says the AI writing feature is an addition to the platform’s AI-powered writing suggestions used on users’ profiles. The latter feature, which is only available to Premium subscribers, uses AI to draft the About section and headlines on users’ profiles.

The AI-driven cover letter feature is available to Premium users as of Tuesday this week.

Source: LinkedIn

But what about those jobs that feel really out of reach? You know the ones we mean – where you need years of education to even send an email to the receptionist. Breaking into the digital economy is difficult, but not impossible. Especially if you were one of the 80 million folks Microsoft took under its wing after it first launched its Global Skills Initiative.

Microsoft takes the lead

Since the program’s launch in 2020, it’s brought 680,000 South Africans into the so-called ‘digital fold’. Okay, nobody really calls it the digital fold. We’re hoping it catches on. Of those 680,000, 30,000 have completed learning paths, and 460 have gone on to collect an official Microsoft certification.

Microsoft and LinkedIn are back with the next stage of the program. The two companies are providing free access to 350 courses, with six Career Essential Certificates on offer to get into the top spots within the digital fold.

Linking up with potential employers

“Digital skills are now more important than ever as almost every job requires some level of digital competence. The new courses and certificates aim to empower unemployed South Africans by providing them with the relevant digital skills to secure in-demand jobs in the digital economy,” says Lillian Barnard, CEO of Microsoft South Africa.

A lofty goal. But a rather important one, especially in South Africa. When talking actual numbers, Microsoft’s eventual goal is to train and certify 10 million people around the world by 2025. There are also 50,000 LinkedIn Learning scholarships on offer to the best of the lot that completes their ‘skilling journey’. A number of those could well be from South Africa.

Read More: Microsoft announces Designer and DALL-E 2 integration into Edge and Bing

The new courses on offer are available in seven languages; English, French, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Simplified Chinese, and Japanese. Using LinkedIn, Microsoft has identified which roles in the digital economy are currently in great demand. Roles like project manager, business analyst, software developer, data analyst, systems admin, and administrative professional.

You can sign up on LinkedIn for the relevant courses. Once you’ve found your niche, get practicing. GitHub is a handy tool that’ll probably come in handy for that. Once you’re all smart, finding a job is the next step. Fortunately, you’ll already be on LinkedIn. You can use it to help find the perfect job to match your new set of skills. You’ll be handed a little badge to show potential employers that you can do what you say you can.

Once you’ve found an opening, check back on LinkedIn’s page. It has a hub for people looking to improve interviewing skills that features tips to help them land a job.

But who should you reach out to for an introduction to a potential new employer? A new study of more than 20 million people, published in Science, shows that your close friends (on LinkedIn) are not your best bet: instead you should look to acquaintances you don’t know well enough to share a personal connection with.

The strength of weak ties

In 1973, the American sociologist Mark Granovetter coined the phrase “the strength of weak ties” in the context of social networks. He argued that the stronger the ties between two individuals, the more their friendship networks will overlap.

Simply put, you are most likely to know all the friends of a close friend, but few of the friends of an acquaintance.

So if you are searching for a job, you probably already know everything your immediate neighbourhood has to offer. Intuitively, it is the weak ties – your acquaintances – that offer the most opportunities for new discoveries.

Weak ties and jobs

Granovetter’s theory feels right, but is it? A team of researchers from LinkedIn, Harvard Business School, Stanford and MIT set out to gather some empirical evidence on how weak ties affect job mobility.

Their research piggy-backed on the efforts of engineers at LinkedIn to test and improve the platform’s “People You May Know” recommendation algorithm. LinkedIn regularly updates this algorithm, which recommends new people to add to your network.

One of these updates tested the effects of encouraging the formation of strong ties (recommending adding your close friends) versus weak ties (recommending acquaintances and friends of friends). The researchers then followed the users that participated in this “A/B testing” to see if the difference impacted their employment outcomes.

More than 20 million LinkedIn users worldwide were randomly assigned to well-defined treatment groups. Users in each group were shown slightly different new contact recommendations, which led users in some groups to form more strong ties and users in other groups to form more weak ties.

Next, the team measured how many jobs users in each group applied for, and how many “job transmissions” occurred. Job transmissions are of particular interest, as they are defined as getting a job in the same company as the new contact. A job transmission suggests the new contact helped land the job.

Moderately weak ties are best

The study uses causal analysis to go beyond simple correlations and connect link formation with employment. There are three important findings.

First, the recommender engine significantly shapes link formation. Users who were recommended more weak links formed significantly more weak links, and users who were recommended more strong links formed more strong links.

Second, the experiment provides causal evidence that moderately weak ties are more than twice as effective as strong ties in helping a job-seeker join a new employer. What’s a “moderately” weak tie? The study found job transmission is most likely from acquaintances with whom you share about 10 mutual friends and rarely interact.

Third, the strength of weak ties varied by industry. Whereas weak ties increased job mobility in more digital industries, strong ties increased job mobility in less digital industries.

Better recommendations

This LinkedIn study is first to causally prove Granovetter’s theory in the employment market. The causal analysis is key here, as large-scale studies of correlations between strength of ties and job transmission have shown strong ties are more beneficial, in what was considered until now a paradox.

This study resolves the paradox and again proves the limitations of correlation studies, which do a poor job at disentangling confounding factors and sometimes lead to the wrong conclusions.

From a practical point of view, the study outlines the best parameters for suggesting new links. It revealed that the connections most helpful in landing a job are your acquaintances, people you meet in professional settings, or friends of friends, rather than your closest friends – people with whom you share about 10 mutual contacts and with whom one is less likely to interact regularly.

These can be translated into algorithmic recommendations, which can make the recommendation engines of professional networks such as LinkedIn even more proficient at helping job-seekers land jobs.

The power of black boxes

The public is often wary when large social media companies perform experiments on their users (see Facebook’s infamous emotion experiment of 2014).

So, could LinkedIn’s experiment have harmed its users? In theory, the users in the “strong link” treatment group might have missed the weak links that could have brought their next job.

However, all groups had some degree of job mobility – some just a bit more than others. Moreover, since the researchers were observing an engineering experiment, the study itself seems to raise few ethical concerns.

Nonetheless, it is a reminder to ask how much our most intimate professional decisions – such as selecting a new career or workplace – are determined by black-box artificial intelligence algorithms whose workings we cannot see.

• Marian-Andrei Rizoiu is a Senior Lecturer in Behavioral Data Science, University of Technology Sydney
• This article first appeared on The Conversation