Tuesday, March 25, 2008

Watch out Hoover's Linkedin is nipping at your

So last night I was just running through my typical end of day routine; a stroll around the office to say good night to everyone, check the coffee pot to make sure it's turned off, one last look at the next day's calendar and a quick check on my various email accounts. I noticed an email from Linkedin Customer Support concerning that request for more invites I sent in 2 weeks ago. Wow, they gave me another 500 invites! So I popped onto Linkedin and started going through the 1300+ contacts I have uploaded but haven't sent an invite to and used up most of my 500 new invites in about 40 seconds. Ahh one can never have too many Linkedin contacts:-). While I was toiling away at my contacts I noticed a new "beta" feature on Linkedin "the Company Profile".

Now when you do a search on LI, specifically for contacts from a particular company, on the results page will be a link to the Company Profile. "Check out the XYZ Company Profile". From first glance LI did a very good job organizing the page. They crammed a lot of information in a one page profile which includes the following:

Left column
1)A company Summary
2)Company employees in your network
3)New Hires in your network
4)Recent promotions and changes
5) Popular profiles

Right Column
1) Related companies
2) Key Statistics on top locations
a)Basic profile info such as Company Gross Revenues, # employees, Web site etc
b)Most common job titles, top schools employees attended, median age, gender
3)Job listings for the Company

The profile data is being supplied in partnership with Business Week and the statistical information is Estimated based on LinkedIn Data.

Linkedin just took step closer to being a one stop shop for corporate information. And best of all it's real time and most of the data is updated by the users. User updated content has it's drawbacks but if monitored can be incredibly valuable, especially to a savvy candidate researcher or recruiter.

Jeff Weidner
HTC Research Corp
925 313 9005 X 200