Starting from today, users who visit LinkedIn Inc.’s desktop site will see a much different social network than they knew until now.

The recently minted Microsoft Corp. subsidiary today rolled out a brand new design that promises to provide a smoother browsing experience. At the core of the interface is a sleek navigation bar that groups the massive amount of content on LinkedIn into seven intuitively organized sections: Home, Messaging, Jobs, Notifications, Me, My Network, and Search. Each is organized in a way that allows users to find what they’re looking for without unnecessary clicks.

LinkedIn, whose design has been criticized for years, showed off the design’s capabilities in a video published today (below). From now on, the first thing that users will see when entering the site is a revamped Home dashboard with a prominent feed displayed at the center. Chris Pruett, the company’s senior director of engineering, said content will be vetted not only by its existing algorithms but also a team of dedicated editors tasked with upholding quality standards.

Over to the bottom left of the interface, LinkedIn has added a new pull-up chat window that makes it possible to easily get in touch with professional contacts. It’s quite similar to Facebook’s messaging function in design but goes a step further on the feature front by providing integration with other sections.

In its demonstration video, LinkedIn shows how users could apply for a position by finding a contact at the company where they wish to be hired and directly message them about the opening. It’s one of several mechanisms that the company has added to help workers seize professional opportunities more easily. Another highlight is a new text generator in the profile customization menu that can automatically produce an overview of a worker’s credentials.

Pruett said the new interface will be rolled out to its entire global user base within a few weeks. The redesign marks the social network’s biggest move since its acquisition by Microsoft, which can be taken as a promising sign of what’s to come. The technology giant plans to integrate LinkedIn with Office 365 to let users update their profiles and find jobs from the same place where they do their work.

Image courtesy of LinkedIn