LinkedIn announced a new skills assessment platform for workers, separately, the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a software firm to continue scraping public data from LinkedIn; online staffing firm Upwork Inc. (NASDAQ: UPWK) reported its first MSP partnership. In the area of automation, Waymo, a division of Google, reported its autonomous vehicle passenger service gave 6,266 people rides in July.

Here is more information:

LinkedIn

LinkedIn introduced a new skills assessment platform to allow workers to validate their skills. The company announced the platform, LinkedIn Skill Assessments, in a blog post on Tuesday.

Once people complete and assessment, they will get a badge to display on their profile in LinkedIn Recruiter and LinkedIn Jobs if they pass the assessment in the 70th percentile or above. If they don’t pass, they can keep the results private.

Assessments will include a range of skills from coding languages like C++ to design software such as Adobe Photoshop to business tools like Microsoft Excel.

Separately, Reuters reported the 9th US Circuit Court of Appeals allowed a company called hiQ Labs Inc. to continue scraping data from LinkedIn, Reuters reported HiQ makes software to help employers determine which employees will quit or stay. The court’s decision upheld a lower court’s injunction against LinkedIn to continue allowing hiQ access to publicly available data from member profiles.

However, in their ruling, the judges wrote that the decision does not resolve the companies’ overall legal dispute.

Upwork

For the first time, online staffing platform Upwork announced a partnership with an MSP. Upwork, the largest B2B online staffing firm, had not worked with MSPs before, but it reported on Sept. 12 that it entered into a relationship to integrate its freelance network with Workforce Logiq.

This allows buyers as well as freelance workers to get access to features of both platforms. The integration aims to provide Workforce Logiq clients access to Upwork’s online talent community via Workforce Logiq’s existing supplier workflows.

And workers on Upwork will get access to Workforce Logiq’s client network with more than $3 billion in spend.

Waymo

Robots and automation are now coming under the purview of some contingent workforce programs. In an example of automation, Waymo, the autonomous vehicle division of Google, reported its autonomous vehicle passenger services transported 6,266 people on 4,678 trips between July 2 and July 31.

The numbers were reported in a filing with the California Public Utilities Commission on Sept. 3.

Rides took place in the Silicon Valley area of California.

Right now, the only people who can hail rides are employees, contractors and agents of Waymo and Alphabet (Google’s parent company). However, they can include guest passengers on the rides.

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