LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional network with over 500 million members. As one of the most popular social media platforms for professionals, LinkedIn contains a wealth of data that can be invaluable for businesses, marketers, recruiters, and developers. Luckily, LinkedIn offers several APIs that allow access to this data in order to enrich applications and services.
LinkedIn’s APIs allow developers to tap into LinkedIn’s platform and enable apps to retrieve profile data, connections, companies, posts, and more. Whether you want to create a recruiting tool, marketing analytics service, Sales Navigator integration, or any other LinkedIn-powered application, LinkedIn’s APIs make it possible.
In this article, we’ll take a closer look at what APIs LinkedIn provides, their capabilities, and how developers can access them.
What is an API?
Before examining LinkedIn’s specific APIs, it helps to take a step back and understand what exactly an API is and its benefits.
API stands for Application Programming Interface. An API allows two software programs to communicate with each other. They specify how one application can interact with another and expose particular data and functionality for external use.
In simpler terms, APIs act as messengers that deliver your request to the provider (LinkedIn in this case) and then return the response back to you. The API handles the communication in the middle on your behalf.
Some key benefits of APIs include:
– APIs allow you to leverage existing data and services without having to build everything from scratch yourself. This saves immense development time and resources.
– APIs enable you to access specialized data and functionality that you wouldn’t be able to recreate on your own.
– APIs allow different software programs to integrate and share data seamlessly. This powers collaboration and automation.
– APIs make it easy to scale applications – you simply access more data through the API as needed.
So in summary, APIs provide a straightforward way for applications to interact with LinkedIn’s huge amounts of data and services. Instead of rebuilding the LinkedIn network yourself, you can leverage LinkedIn’s existing capabilities via their APIs.
Overview of LinkedIn’s APIs and capabilities
LinkedIn provides several different APIs that serve various purposes. Here’s an overview of LinkedIn’s main API offerings and their capabilities:
LinkedIn Marketing Developer Platform
The LinkedIn Marketing Developer Platform provides APIs and tools that allow marketers to optimize their LinkedIn campaigns, pages, and ads programmatically. Key capabilities include:
– Campaign Manager API – Create, manage, and analyze your LinkedIn ads campaigns. Get reporting data, adjust bid amounts, update targeting, etc.
– Conversion Tracking API – Track conversions from your LinkedIn ads across websites, apps, and offline sales.
– Matched Audiences API – Target your LinkedIn ads using hashed email addresses or other contact info from your customer lists.
– Pages API – Manage company pages, showcase pages, and publish long-form posts.
– Analytics API – Pull cross-channel analytics on your LinkedIn ads and pages.
Talent Solutions APIs
LinkedIn’s Talent Solutions provide APIs to tap into LinkedIn’s data for recruiting and HR purposes. The main APIs include:
– Recruiter System Connect (RSC) API – Integrate your ATS or HRIS system with LinkedIn Recruiter to manage job postings and candidates.
– Apply with LinkedIn API – Allow job applicants to apply using their LinkedIn profile on your site.
– Candidate Search API – Search and filter LinkedIn member profiles using sophisticated queries to find qualified candidates.
– Job Search API – Programmatically post jobs, interact with applicants, and search jobs.
LinkedIn Platform REST APIs
LinkedIn Platform APIs give access to LinkedIn’s social graph and core capabilities like profiles, connections, groups, shares, companies, and more. The main APIs include:
– People API – Retrieve member profiles and connections.
– Interests API – Get member interests and skills.
– Companies API – Access company profiles including attributes like follower counts and job postings.
– Groups API – Manage group memberships and post content to groups.
– Share API – Publish share updates and retrieve feed shares and comments.
Other notable APIs
In addition to the main API groups above, LinkedIn provides other APIs like:
– Widgets API – Embed LinkedIn profile badges, share buttons, and Follow buttons.
– Plugins API – Integrate LinkedIn functionality into your site, like personalized recommendations.
– Sign-In API – Let members sign in to your site using their LinkedIn account.
– Enterprise APIs – Partner with LinkedIn to get custom APIs tailored to your needs.
As you can see, LinkedIn has opened up nearly all key parts of its platform via APIs. This gives developers tremendous flexibility to build apps and services that integrate with LinkedIn’s rich data.
Next, let’s look at how you can actually access these APIs as a developer.
How to access LinkedIn APIs
To start using LinkedIn’s APIs, you first need to register as a LinkedIn developer and create an application. Here are the steps:
1. Sign up for a LinkedIn developer account
Go to LinkedIn Developers and click “Get Started”. Follow the prompts to create your LinkedIn developer account if you don’t already have one. Make sure you use the same email address associated with your personal LinkedIn account.
2. Create a LinkedIn app
Once signed up, go to My Apps and create a new app. Select the LinkedIn products you want to use for your app. This will determine which APIs you can access. Provide an app name, description, logo, and decide whether your app is internal or public.
3. Agree to API Terms of Use
Read and accept LinkedIn’s API Terms of Use which outlines proper API usage guidelines. You must agree to access most APIs.
4. Configure API keys
LinkedIn uses OAuth 2.0 for API authentication and authorization. After creating your app, you’ll get an API Key and Secret Key. These keys identify your app during API calls.
Store your keys securely – don’t expose the Secret Key in public code. API keys authenticate you as the app owner.
5. Set API permissions
Determine what LinkedIn data and operations your app needs access to. On the Auth tab, select the permissions scopes for each API your app uses. For example, specify which profile fields you want to retrieve with the People API.
6. Implement OAuth 2.0
To make API requests, you need an OAuth 2.0 access token authorizing your app. There are several ways to implement OAuth with different grants and workflows.
Common approaches include server-side authorization codes, client-side implicit grant, and service accounts. Follow LinkedIn’s OAuth 2 docs to enable access tokens in your app.
7. Start making API calls!
You’re all set! Now you can start hitting LinkedIn’s APIs by sending HTTP requests with your access token and reviewing the response. Refer to the docs for code snippets, endpoints, parameters, and more.
Some popular ways to interact with APIs include:
– LinkedIn API Explorer – Interactive tool to test API calls.
– Postman – GUI for constructing API requests.
– cURL – Command line tool for API testing.
– LinkedIn API libraries – wrappers for different languages like Python, Java, JavaScript.
– Your own code – Send properly authenticated requests from your application.
The possibilities are endless once you can access LinkedIn data through their powerful APIs!
Example API uses cases
Now that you understand the basics of LinkedIn’s APIs, let’s look at some real-world examples of how developers can leverage these APIs:
Recruiting and HR
– Build a custom ATS integrated with LinkedIn Recruiter data.
– Create a Chrome extension that shows LinkedIn profile data on job sites.
– Automatically post open positions to LinkedIn Jobs with the Jobs API.
– Let candidates apply for jobs by importing their LinkedIn profile.
Marketing
– Create custom LinkedIn ads and manage campaigns programmatically.
– Develop a LinkedIn advertising dashboard with metrics and analytics.
– Integrate website analytics with LinkedIn Insights for cross-channel reporting.
– Segment website visitors based on LinkedIn demographic data.
Social integration
– Allow users to sign in to your app with LinkedIn authentication.
– Display users’ LinkedIn connections, groups, and feed posts.
– Publish content to LinkedIn on behalf of users.
– Analyze social graphs to suggest new connections.
Business intelligence
– Build a LinkedIn company/industry data scraper for market research.
– Create tools to analyze employees, competitors, and trends.
– Automatically enrich your database with LinkedIn profile data.
– Develop Chrome extensions for searching LinkedIn while browsing the web.
The possibilities are truly endless! LinkedIn’s APIs open up so many ways to integrate LinkedIn data into your apps and services.
Limitations and considerations
While LinkedIn’s APIs provide tremendous opportunities, they do come with some limitations and factors to consider:
Rate limits
LinkedIn enforces rate limits on API requests to ensure availability. You may be temporarily blocked if you exceed call frequency thresholds. Adjust your application to avoid hitting the limits.
Cost
Some LinkedIn APIs require purchasing packages and seats for full access. Be aware of the costs based on your expected usage levels.
User privacy
Respect member privacy settings when using profile data. Only pull the minimum fields needed. Clearly communicate how you use data.
Compliance
Ensure your usage follows LinkedIn’s terms and API policies. Don’t use data for spam, scraping competitors, or other prohibited practices.
Changes over time
Like any API provider, LinkedIn updates APIs and deprecates old versions over time. Build resilient integration that can adapt as APIs evolve.
Overall though, LinkedIn’s developer platform provides amazing access to data for almost any need. With proper precautions and planning, you can build awesome LinkedIn-powered apps!
Conclusion
In summary:
– LinkedIn provides several powerful APIs to access their platform capabilities and extensive data.
– You can register as a LinkedIn developer, create an app, and implement OAuth to start using LinkedIn’s APIs.
– Key APIs give access to data for marketing, recruiting, social connections, company info, and more.
– There are countless possibilities to integrate LinkedIn data into your own apps and services.
– Handle API limitations properly, and you can build game-changing products powered by LinkedIn.
So in conclusion, yes – there certainly is an extensive API available for LinkedIn if you want to tap into their 500+ million members and rich platform features!
Frequently Asked Questions
What can you do with the LinkedIn API?
The LinkedIn API allows you to retrieve data from LinkedIn to use in your own applications. Some top uses cases include building recruiting/HR tools, social media integrations, marketing analytics, business intelligence, and more.
What languages does the LinkedIn API support?
LinkedIn provides API client libraries for popular languages like JavaScript, Python, Java, Ruby, PHP, and Objective-C. You can also call LinkedIn APIs directly using any language that supports HTTP requests.
Is there a free LinkedIn API?
Yes, LinkedIn offers free APIs for members and apps to access core platform capabilities with certain rate limits. Higher usage levels may require paid packages and licenses.
What can I do with a LinkedIn API key?
LinkedIn API keys (along with secret keys) allow you to authenticate your API requests. API keys identify your application to LinkedIn when accessing LinkedIn data through their APIs.
Does LinkedIn have a search API?
Yes, LinkedIn provides APIs for searching profiles, jobs, companies, groups, and other content. The main search APIs include the People Search API and Job Search API.