LinkedIn for Students
App Concept
Client Project
Experience Design
Role
Product Designer, Student Mobile Flow
Team
6 designers, 2 MBA advisors
Timeline
Feb - May 2026
Tools
Figma
Context
Every stage of the job search got its own software. Except the one that matters most for students.
The team at DFA Pro Studio ideated a possible new feature within LinkedIn's existing user flows - targeted at college students. We discovered there is a real gap that LinkedIn and competitors like Handshake and Indeed still fail to address for college students in particular: the career fair.
Attending the fair and following up after — both converge on one moment, and both run on paper and memory.
How might LinkedIn help students get real value out of campus recruiting, when the platform both sides already use has no presence at the one event that matters most?
Research
Recruiters see 80+ students a day at a career fair. For students, it's hard to get remembered and know where to go
Students spend
94%
of their time at career fairs waiting in line
At fairs, noise levels
-42%
drop in memory and recall
Physical density
+70%
at fairs over the past 2 years
Source: NACE 2024–25 Career Services Benchmarks
LinkedIn already owns the piece no competitor has: recruiters live in LinkedIn Recruiter, students already have profiles built. Both sides of the table, already logged in, making a career fair companion the next step.
Thus, we prototyped a career fair companion app for LinkedIn, aimed at making the experience as smooth as possible for both students and recruiters alike.
Design Decisions
Built around one rule: reduce friction at every touchpoint
The app itself is simple: a student checks in with their school email, browses the fair on a live map with every company a tap away, and confirms each booth visit with a QR code or NFC tap instead of a paper resume. Four moments, all four cutting whatever used to require a form, a browser, or a recruiter's memory.
Craft Detail: the team hand-built a physical NFC placard prototype, 3D-printed, custom-coded. The tap is a small ritual, like Apple Pay. Something to do in the awkward moment of walking up to a recruiter cold and for the recruiter to keep track of attendees.
Recruiter Side
A parallel companion for the other side of the booth
I assisted in prototyping the recruiter view, which was designed by a teammate, shown here for the full pitch.
Also in the pitch
A theoretical desktop dashboard rounded out the demo
Student Hub (Desktop)
A theoretical desktop dashboard with extra student features, pitched as a direction to LinkedIn, intentionally left rough, not a deliverable.
Student Homepage
Reflection
What I'd carry into the next pitch.
Designing something meant to be pitched changes the bar. Every screen had to survive a live walkthrough in front of a LinkedIn product director. The sharpest feedback was to keep the story to one clear "why now," and let LinkedIn's own assets do the heavy lifting instead of pitching something built from scratch.
