LinkedIn on Thursday welcomed data-driven job search startup Bright to their family. At $120 million (73 percent in stock and the remainder in cash), the purchase qualifies as LinkedIn's largest to date and looks to be a natural fit for the professional-minded social network.

The three-year-old startup specializes in using data to help connect talent with opportunity. We've all heard stories of talented people applying for dozens, or even hundreds of jobs, without ever hearing anything back. Yet on the opposite end, recruiting teams often get bombarded by mountains of applications and can easily overlook qualified applicants.

Bright created a scoring system that give applicants a score based on how good of a match they might be for a particular job. This helps people on both sides of the equation find the perfect match without wasting time and resources on dead-end leads.

Bright founder Eduardo Vivas said they decided to join LinkedIn because of what they lacked - the ability to apply their technology across the entire economy. LinkedIn will be able to do just that but according to a spokesperson for the company, they're still in the process of thinking through the details.

The deal is expected to close sometime in the first quarter of this year, pending regulatory approval and the like. Once that is done, we're told that several team members will join LinkedIn.

Current Bright users will be able to access the service through February 28.