by These social media networks allowed to share your vacation photos, self portraits and also status messages where you wanted to communicate with someone. It also had the option to join or form like minded groups on a certain category which helped you to network with people having similar interests. This could be a movie buffs community or a book reading club or even those who would love to cook. It never really ventured into work or career related forums nor was it really interesting
Identifying the gap in this space, LinkedIn launched itself as a solo corporate social media website instantly grabbing a lot of eyeballs. The focus was purely on work related topics, job openings, ideas on growth in current job, reconnecting with colleagues etc
LinkedIn allowed a colleague to publicly appreciate and even endorse another colleague for his skills, talents. This endorsement from a current colleague carried a lot of weightage instead of person recommending another without any relationship between the two. Companies came to know about an employee’s skills through the talent and skill listed he had mentioned. They were even able to find people who had experience in a particular subject matter and recruited them, all through LinkedIn. The field of Human Resources and traditional recruiting practices had a huge impact because of LinkedIn. People no longer had to push themselves harder for them to be heard nor attend countless walk-in interviews. They had to create a profile in LinkedIn and fill it with the right keywords which defined them.
Example if he/she was a software engineer and had extensive experience in the field of Mainframes he’d mention that his top skills included it and of course came a lot of endorsements from his superiors, colleagues etc. This added a value boost. So companies having mainframe requirements no longer had to sift through resumes in job boards, but rather searched for the keyword in LinkedIn. This resulted in a list of live profiles of people working specially on it with good experience. A couple of mails and negotiations later, it ended up in an offer letter. Company got a guy who may have not earlier posted in a job portal and would have settled for someone mediocre. The employee may have got a 30-40% increase from his current salary and may not even be aware that there was a similar job opening in another firm for the same role
End of the day it’s a win-win for both the corporates and the employees as it gives a visibility impact which no website or process could have done. The recent acquisition of Slideshare by Linkedin can only add on further to its impact
This blog post is inspired by the blogging marathon hosted on IndiBlogger for the launch of the #Fantastico Zica from Tata Motors. You can apply for a test drive of the hatchback Zica today.
