We’re making great strides toward our mission:
**As of May 3, 2012, LinkedIn has north of 161 million members, and we’re now adding more than two members every second. This is the fastest rate of absolute member growth in the company’s history. Sixty percent of LinkedIn members are currently located outside of the United States.
As of September 30, 2011 (the end of the third quarter), LinkedIn counts executives from all 2011 Fortune 500 companies as members; its corporate hiring solutions are used by 75 of the Fortune 100 companies.
More than 2 million companies have LinkedIn Company Pages.
LinkedIn members did nearly 4.2 billion professionally-oriented searches on the platform in 2011
[See http://press.linkedin.com/about for a complete list of LinkedIn facts and stats]
LinkedIn is a professional network, not a job board. Members come to LinkedIn for a number of reasons:
Maintaining their professional profile of record
Networking with other professionals
Finding insights to get better at what they do
Active job searching is just one of the reasons professionals come to LinkedIn, and the majority of LinkedIn’s members are passive job seekers.
[RMs may remove this slide if context has already been set]
People follow companies on different social platforms for different reasons. There is a context to these social platforms that you need to be aware of. Missing the signal on context means your business content can be lost among your audiences, or worse…ignored.
On Facebook and Twitter, people follow companies for deals and discounts. This is the context of the site and what people expect to get.
Alternatively, on LinkedIn, people follow companies for news, actionable insights, and information. This is the context of the site and what people expect to get.
Key Takeaway: People expect different things from the companies they follow on the different social platforms.
Facebook – 46% looking for incentives or rewards for engaging with the brand
Twitter – 66% to get discounts, 48% to participate in contests
LinkedIn – 68% for news, insights, information
http://totalaccess.emarketer.com/Chart.aspx?R=112793&dsNav=Ntk:basic%7ctwitter%7c1%7c-basic%7cfollow%7c1%7c,Ro:15,N:1045-500&kwredirect=n%2cn%2cn
1+2 eMarketer (Lab42 study, August 2011)
3 LinkedIn Follower Analysis, January 2012
Social – backyard BBQ
Professional – Networking Lunch
Broadcast
LinkedIn helps you get to where you want to go in your career
It lets you connect (degree by degree) with the connections of your connections with mutual benefits such as job referrals, job opportunities within your industry, discussions on various industry topics, event announcements and more.
Connect with classmates, faculty, friends and colleagues professionally.
Find new job opportunities & manage what potential employers learn about you
Over half of the 175+ million professionals on LinkedIn are from outside of the US which is very important for your international career prospects.
Your LinkedIn profile represents your definitive professional image on the Web and is discoverable through millions of searches on LinkedIn by employers and from search engines like Google.
In a tough job market, it’s incredibly important to define your skills and experience and make yourself stand out from the crowd. You are in complete control over what others see on your profile, so leverage this to showcase your skills and talents so the right people and right opportunities find you.
Your LinkedIn profile is your online CV that is being viewed by far more recruiters than your paper CV. Therefore, building a complete LinkedIn profile (free) with as much relevant information as possible, is very important.
Your LinkedIn profile does not / should not be a mirror image of your CV
** Recommendations on LinkedIn are very important for recruiters to differentiate you from other profiles. Remember - two new members join LinkedIn every second. As a result, more people are using it for intelligence, recruitment, and networking. But to best leverage the power of the network, it’s suggested that people gather few great recommendations to display on their LinkedIn profile. Great recommendations can be the difference between getting a position or project offer over someone else. I will provide a link to you at the end to show you how to do this.
Once you’ve established your professional identity on LinkedIn, you can leverage LinkedIn Groups and Tools to access the jobs you’re interested in. You have access to LinkedIn’s Advanced Search to check out the career paths of other people with similar interests to you. It’s like having a database of 170+ million professional’s career paths.
Use the ‘Advanced Search Function to find your ideal company/job – view their company page on LinkedIn – view and reach out to people already working there – review their profiles - see their skills and previous careers.
This will enable you to learn more about how to get an interview/referral at that company and tailor your CV accordingly.
Recruiters globally are using the LinkedIn Corporate Recruiting Platform which enables them to search and target members across the entire LinkedIn network. To be found and matched with the right opportunity, it’s important that you have a complete 100% profile and are members of LinkedIn Groups. This optimizes your chances of being found and contacted about job opportunities relevant to your profile and skills.
Link to completing your profile: http://careerservices.linkedin.com/profile/
LinkedIn is not only the world’s largest professional network, it is a place to converse with like-minded professionals to learn and share information and build your professional brand.
Connecting with people on LinkedIn is an important way to build your network. For example, I’m directly connected to over 700 people (my 1st degree connections). This means that we can see each other’s profiles in full and send LinkedIn messages. A second degree connection is someone who is LinkedIn with your connection, but not directly with you. My first degree connections yield over 30,930 new people that are 2 degrees away and 98,300 that are 3 degrees away.
Second degree connections are presented to you in the “People You May Know” section on your home page.
Have rules about who you will connect with. You should have some relationship with that person, whether you went to college together, worked together, met at an event, and so on. Don’t allow anybody into your network.
Millions of professionals use LinkedIn Groups to connect and share insights with like-minded professionals every day. With almost 1.5 million groups on LinkedIn, these groups are designed to help you network in your profession, learn about new job opportunities and discuss best practices in your industry.
Join LinkedIn Groups that are related to your profession and industry (e.g. College Groups & Alumni.
Be engaged in groups as they enable engagement within your professional communities.
Follow and interact with influential people in your groups and see their group activity and discussions.