I'm very impressed with at least one of the new applications that are in BETA form on LinkedIn. This one allows users to scroll over the company name listed by your connections or prospective connections – if the company is part of the LinkedIn/Business Week/S&P database, vast amounts of information will be revealed!
These Company Profiles offer a veritable feast of data that career changers and job seekers need to know and use to prepare their "mini business plan," for example:
- Company headquarters mailing address and contact information
- Link to website
- Common job titles
- Top schools from which employees are recruited
- Median age of employees
- Gender breakdown
- Recent jobs posted on LinkedIn
- NYSE information
From the social media folks at LinkedIn, you'll find a list of employees, new hires, and those recently promoted who are LinkedIn. Useful data that is consolidated and easy to access can be surprisingly hard to find in this Internet-Age. See this example from Shopzilla
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Completely agree. Each day LinkedIn becomes a more powerful tool for networking and research. Social media is exploding and sites like LinkedIn, Facebook, and Twitter are well positioned to capitalize on the trend. The world is truly becoming a smaller place. As a career switcher myself and one who is actively looking for my next opportunity, I am learning each day about how I can effectively utilize these sites to enhance my search. Thanks!
Yes, LinkedIn is cool and it’s great that they’ve opened their platform. Still, I am trying to manage our corporate LinkedIn account and it’s a PAIN. They could learn a thing or two about customer service from Facebook!
(Never thought I would write that…)
Anyway, let’s hope that this beta will allow LI to get their stuff sorted out.