I don't think it is designed for people "looking for work". It seems to be built for business development. For example, an email like: "Hey, we met at a conference last month, just wanted to follow up..." - now you can see who they are, where they work, a profile picture to jog your memory and quickly connect - all from your email client. Very similar to what Rapportive did for Gmail.
That's actually a good point. I never would think to use Linked in as a business card. I usually would just write, "Hey it's me from that place we met."
Here's the thing though, whenever I send an email like that to someone I always include my LinkedIn profile for them to check out, which would redirect to the app on their phone. Personally, it does seem a bit unnecessary to include this feature.