Raising Your Visibility with LinkedIn - LinkedIn and Company Profiles
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So what are these company profiles that LinkedIn now offers? LinkedIn describes them as “a new research tool that helps you find and explore companies that you may want to work for or do business with.” LinkedIn now boasts more than 160,000 company profiles. They include an overview of the company’s industry data and LinkedIn data about the company (remember the information you include in your profile about what company you work for?).
You can find a company profile in a number of ways. One way is to look in an individual’s profile for a logo right next to company titles in their work history. In that case, clicking on the company name will take you to the profile. Or you can search for the company directly. I did that for eBay, and was mildly dismayed to discover that there’s no way I can show you the complete profile in one image. But I can show you some of it and paint a picture with words. So here’s a screen shot:
As you can see, it’s a two-column format. Starting on the top left, the company profile includes a description of the company, with the ability to flag the description if it’s wrong. Just below that are the eBay employees that are in your network. The next thing you see below that is a list of new hires. Below that list come two things that didn’t make it into my screen shot: a list of recent promotions and changes, and popular profiles from the company.
Now let’s look at the right side. It starts with a list of related companies. How are these companies related to eBay? Well, the first set is divisions. But the second set tells you where eBay employees have worked before taking jobs at eBay, and after leaving eBay. And the third set tells you what companies eBay employees are most connected to – that is, if I were employed by eBay, where are the folks I’ve formed connections with through LinkedIn most likely to be employed?
Continuing down the right side, we come to a set of key statistics. These include where most people working for the company are located, how large the company is, when it was founded, what type of company it is, common job titles, median age of employees, etc. These are the kinds of things that can give you some sense of what it might be like to work for the company – a bare-bones sense, granted, but at least it’s a clue. Finally, again in an area that didn’t make it into the screen shot, there is a list of openings at the company that have been posted on LinkedIn.
I’ve seen one complaint about the Company Profiles feature, coming from someone whose company has not yet been listed. It sounded like sour grapes to me. While the feature is in beta, and LinkedIn’s blogs emphasize how much work it took to get it where it is, I can already see its usefulness. LinkedIn is all about business, and the information in a LinkedIn company profile would be invaluable to someone looking for a job.
There are tons of social networks out there, but it looks like there’s only one that really means business. If you’re serious about networking, you need to be a member of LinkedIn, and you need to make the most of your profile. Good luck!
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