LinkedIn India is now 20 Million Members Strong [INFOGRAPHIC]
It gives me immense pleasure to announce another momentous occasion in LinkedIn India’s journey. Earlier this month, we crossed 20 million members in India. It is humbling to play a part in the professional lives of millions of Indians, helping them be more productive and successful in their careers.
Our members have been our motivation since we started operations in India a little over three years ago. Since then, our member base has grown by almost 500% from 3.4 million to 20 million today. To me, however, it is not just about growing our member count but about enabling our members to grow themselves. And members of the “City of LinkedIn India” have done just that.
The population of “City of LinkedIn India” is comparable to that of Mumbai’s total metropolitan area and larger than that of many countries. Our diverse member population comprises individuals at various stages of their careers – from students to CXOs at the top of their fields. Their skills range from management to testing across industries, and their locations span Tier 1 metros to rapidly emerging towns. A little known fact is that 80% of our members influence business decisions and a many have high household incomes, making them one of the most influential and affluent audiences on the web in India. Ultimately though, they are connected by a mutual interest in maintaining their professional identity and investing time on LinkedIn to enhance their skills by tapping into the collective wisdom of their professional network.
Being a members first company with a vision to create economic opportunity for the entire workforce, helping members get the most out of LinkedIn remains our primary focus. Members can now showcase their professional identity through rich profiles, leverage insights in the form of news, opinions & connections being shared by their network, and enjoy this value everywhere via our popular new mobile apps. We see compelling stories everyday about how members leverage LinkedIn to great effect. Here are just two examples of the diversity of our platform:
Leveraging their LinkedIn identity at all career stages
Take Jayant T.C.A., (Marketing Consultant for Delhi Daredevils) created his LinkedIn profile as a student and leveraged LinkedIn to engage with executives to raise funds for the AIESEC International Congress.
Contrast this with Alvin Saldahna (Chief Creative Officer at Idea Domain) who was well established in his career when he built a strong LinkedIn profile and used it to promote his blog, become a teacher and start his own creative company.
Making LinkedIn as their insights hub & professional publishing platform
Consider Rajeev Gangal (Associate Director, Medicinal Chemistry at Sai Advantium Pharma Ltd) who used LinkedIn to poll a targeted audience in the niche field of molecular discovery and gather their insights, instead of commissioning a primary research study. By doing so, he saved a substantial amount of time & money.
Compare that to Jessie Paul (Managing Director of Paul Writer) who started a LinkedIn Group to connect with Chief Marketing Officers to discuss common industry issues and share her opinions. This then led her to start her own firm Paul Writer.
These shining member stories never fail to amaze and inspire me. I’d love to hear about your personal LinkedIn success story. Share your story and read other India member impact stories on Slideshare.
With 20 million members and growing, it’s safe to say that we have come of age in India. Yet the most exciting part for me is that we’re just getting started. On this day, I’d like to thank each one of you for being an incredibly valuable part of the “City of LinkedIn India”!
Out-of-the-Ordinary Job Opportunities on LinkedIn [INFOGRAPHIC]
At LinkedIn, our mission is to connect talent with opportunity at massive scale. In the past 18 months, we’ve more than doubled the number of job opportunities posted on LinkedIn. We now have more than 220,000 great opportunities for members like you.
If the total number doesn’t surprise you, the variety surely will. With summer on the horizon, students will be delighted to learn that more than 8,000 internships are currently posted on LinkedIn. The most popular internship? The marketing intern program at Walt Disney, an opportunity that has attracted 40X the views compared to the average internship job posting.
See the highlights in our infographic of ‘out of the ordinary’ opportunities on LinkedIn from April 2013:
What interesting opportunities have you applied for on LinkedIn? Share with us on our LinkedIn Company Page or on Twitter @LinkedIn.
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How LinkedIn Changed My Life
Today I received notice that I was accepted into the LinkedIn Influencer Program. Perhaps I was accepted because today is my birthday, but it immediately made me reflect on my relationship with LinkedIn, how LinkedIn has changed my life and the lessons learned from those experiences.
In 2003 I was an MBA graduate looking for a job at a startup and was introduced to Reid Hoffman through a mutual friend. Although LinkedIn wasn’t hiring people with my background (no startup or technology experience) I did have the opportunity to meet Reid, learn about the business and as a result became fascinated with the social media space. That chance meeting ended up being fundamental to my eventually finding a business development job at a competitor of LinkedIn called Spoke.
Lesson: Career success takes a network and you never know what meetings or weak ties will lead you to the outcome you want.
By late 2004, it became clear that Spoke did not have the leadership, product or momentum to compete with LinkedIn. In 2004, I received an InMail via LinkedIn from a recruiter looking for a young and aggressive business development executive at Plaxo, a rapidly growing social address book company. I took the interview, was very impressed with the team, company, investors and product, and ended up joining the company.
Lesson: Be willing to explore new opportunities and look for hidden benefits. Plaxo eventually sold for $ 180M but it was my relationship Jon Callaghan (a board member and future investor in BrightRoll) that changed my life the most.
In 2006, I decided there was a fundamental shift happening in the consumption of online video and I left Plaxo to start BrightRoll, a video advertising platform. For the first few years we recruited engineers and sales people primarily from our personal network. However, it quickly became clear that we weren’t going to scale to 100s of employees on our personal network alone. After a call from an old friend named Mike Gamson, I decided to give LinkedIn Recruiter a try. From that day on, LinkedIn has been the primary recruiting tool used by BrightRoll and was one of the best recruiting decisions we ever made.
Lesson: As an entrepreneur, capital is your most scarce asset. However, the LinkedIn Recruiter math was simple — hire one person a year and it’s a positive ROI. There is no better recruiting tool in the world.
In 2011, I decided that BrightRoll needed a VP of engineering to help us quickly scale from 15 developers to over 100 developers in order to better serve our customers and meet the rapidly evolving needs of the industry. After actively searching for six months, we still had not found the right person for the job. One day, a friend encouraged me to reach out to Chris Amen-Kroeger at Conviva, implying that he may be open to making a change. Without hesitation I sent him an InMail and we were chatting on the phone within 24 hours. A month later, Chris joined the company as VP of Engineering and we are well on the path to our 100th developer.
Lesson: Be aggressive and use InMails. Everyone reads their email (even if they tell you they don’t) and nothing is more powerful than a well timed and well written new job opportunity.
Now, as an LinkedIn Influencer I’m excited to see the ways in which LinkedIn continues to impact my life, career and company. I encourage you to share stories of how LinkedIn has changed your life in the comments below.
Photo credit: JeffreyKatra.com
Editor’s Note: This was originally posted by Tod Sacerdoti as part of the LinkedIn Influencer Program. Follow him on LinkedIn.
Making LinkedIn More Accessible
In celebration of Global Accessibility Awareness Day, we are happy to share some enhancements to LinkedIn to help professionals of all backgrounds and abilities be more productive and successful. What started out as a few passion projects by members of LinkedIn’s web development team has now become the formation of our Accessibility Web Developer Task Force, dedicated to making LinkedIn user experiences inclusive and accessible. Here’s what we’ve been up to lately:
Improved Site Navigation: Members who navigate with a keyboard can now better perceive where they are on a LinkedIn page and save time in moving between professional content and features.
Interacting with LinkedIn: We’re bringing Notifications to members who navigate with a keyboard, so they can now be notified in real-time when someone likes what they’ve shared on LinkedIn, profile views, invitation acceptances, and much more. Actions like sending messages and interacting with dialog boxes are quick and easy for keyboard and screen reader users.
Added Image Descriptions: All major areas of the site now include image text alternatives so that blind and low-vision members have more context when doing things like navigating news from their networks in the LinkedIn feed or checking out profiles of other members.
We’re excited to continue building a great experience for all of our LinkedIn members, and hope you’ll join us in the effort to advance digital accessibility around the world. Next up, we’re working on an in-page navigation tool to help keyboard and screen reader users better navigate long pages. Stay tuned!
Refreshed LinkedIn Today Offers a New Way to Discover Content with Channels [SLIDESHOW]
We want to make it easier for you to stay on top of the news and insights you need to be great at what you do. Millions of professionals are coming to LinkedIn to glean these daily insights to help inform their business conversations and decisions everyday.
You will start to see a refreshed look on LinkedIn Today and the introduction of channels to make it easier for you to Discover and Share professional news and insights. Through channels you can follow broader topic areas that cross multiple industries and professional sectors. By following channels you will have access to timely and relevant professional news and insights that can help you stay one step ahead and be in the know on what’s trending in your professional network. Channels represent a more comprehensive way to discover, share, and engage with high-quality Influencer posts, top news sources, and SlideShare content — all in one place.
New features include:
- New, simpler and modern design – We’ve streamlined the look and feel of LinkedIn Today to make it easier for you to discover and share the news and information that matters most to you.
- Follow a Channel – You can follow more than 20 different channels ranging from topics such as Your Career, Economy, Social Impact, Big Ideas and Innovation, and Higher Education, with more channels to be added over time. Once you follow a channel, you will automatically see updates from that channel directly in your Homepage stream.
- New ways to sort content – You can easily navigate to exactly what you’re looking for with new sorting options, including:
- Your News – Offers a customized LinkedIn Today page, which features the latest news from the channels and Influencers you follow.
- Influencer Posts – Provides a quick overview of the top Influencer posts of the day.
- All Influencers – Shows you our more than 250 Influencers in one place, sorted alphabetically and by number of followers, so you can easily follow someone.
- All Channels – Displays our new channels so you can easily follow the professional topics that interest you.
- More relevant email digests – Your email digests will now offer a comprehensive overview of top Influencer posts, trending professional news, and Slideshare content all in one place.
The newly refreshed LinkedIn Today experience with channels is rolling out to all english-speaking members this week. Start following a channel today to see what is trending in your professional universe by going here: http://www.linkedin.com/today.
The Evolution of LinkedIn [SLIDESHOW]
From our humble beginnings in a living room in Palo Alto to today’s 26 offices around the world, LinkedIn has become a global destination for more than 225 million professionals around the world.
We started out as a network for professionals to build their professional identities and connect with one another. As our products have evolved over the past ten years, LinkedIn has changed the way professionals work and has shifted some fundamental business habits. The way professionals connect with one another, find and pursue new business opportunities, discover and share information and insights, as well as how companies are finding the right talent for the right opportunity, have all forever changed with the power of LinkedIn.
Join me in taking a look back at the evolution of LinkedIn.com and how we’ve transformed the way professionals work.
It goes without saying that none of this would be possible without you, our wonderful members. We’re excited to continue bringing you delightful experiences everyday to help you be great at what you do.
LinkedIn Turns 10: Celebrating 10 Years of Relationships That Matter
Ten years ago, I co-founded LinkedIn in my living room with the mission of connecting the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful. Inspired by the invaluable role relationships played in our own careers, we launched LinkedIn with the tagline “Relationships matter.”
At the end of our first month, we had 4,500 members in the network. 10 years later, we’re honored and humbled that so many of you have made LinkedIn a part of your daily professional lives.
Today, hundreds of millions of professionals around the world are turning to LinkedIn to connect with each other, manage their identities, get insights they need to be great at what they do, and find their dream jobs. I’m continually inspired by our members’ career aspirations and achievements. Click on the image below to take a look at our journey since 2003, including photos of our first office and notes from an early meeting with my co-founders.
See a Brief History of LinkedIn
None of this would be possible without all of our LinkedIn employees, past and present, who’ve poured their passion and talents into building this company. In 2003, we were a handful of guys in a living room. Today, 3,700+ employees are celebrating “Cinco de LinkedIn” around the world.
More Photos From Cinco de LinkedIn Celebrations
Our vision at LinkedIn is to create economic opportunity for every professional in the world. We look forward to helping you accomplish much more in the years to come and growing the relationships that matter most. Thank you for being a part of our journey.
How to Use LinkedIn to Find a Financial Advisor
I love talking money. I like helping people understand how it works, how it’s built and how it can be spent. As a financial advisor, I meet people from all walks of life with a wide range of experiences and needs. I’ve seen a real shift in the last few years where I’m engaging with clients who are much savvier about their finances, coming to me with more information they get in social media. More and more, my clients are turning to places like LinkedIn to gain control over financial decisions, to connect with like-minded peers or advisors, and to seek insights as they make decisions.
A recent LinkedIn study Influencing The Mass Affluent found that close to 90% of people with assets between $ 100K – $ 1M turn to social media to help them make important financial decisions.
If you’re looking for a financial advisor, doing your due diligence is critical, so here are some best practices as you do your research on LinkedIn:
- Leverage your network. Search your 1st, 2nd and 3rd connections on LinkedIn to see if someone you know can give you a personal referral.
- Search for individuals. Financial advice is very personal so you’ll want to like and trust the person you are going to work with. Looking at a person’s profile is hugely important. Check out the advisor’s professional biography, and make sure to scroll through the complete profile to find out more about them as well as their interests and passions. If you want face-to-face meetings, narrow your search geographically. Otherwise, many advisors work with clients remotely so don’t be afraid to look further from home.
- Use Advanced Search. Use as many keywords as possible to narrow your search such as: CFP, Certified Financial Planner, fiduciary, fee-only, fee-based, NAPA advisor, FPA advisor, or fee-only financial advisor. Financial advisors call themselves many things, which can be confusing. Some of the terms besides financial advisor are financial planner, investment advisor, wealth manager, fee-only advisor. It helps to know something about the types of advisors out there before you start your search. The SEC is a good place to start: http://www.sec.gov/investor/pubs/invadvisers.htm. Note that not all investment advisors do financial planning but many financial planners do investment advising.
- Reach out on LinkedIn. Once you’ve identified a few advisors you are interested in, contact them through LinkedIn to let them know what services you’re interested in and how you’re hoping they might help you.
Finding the right partners in your financial journey is incredibly important, and LinkedIn is a great resource to help steer you in the right direction.
Editor’s Note: LinkedIn is hosting Finance Connect in New York City today for marketing leaders in the financial services industry. Follow #inFC13 on Twitter for updates.
