Once again, I offer my semi-frequent reminder and pointer for blog readers that I also write a monthly column at Human Resource Executive Online called Inside HR Tech that can be found here.
This month, I take a look back at the Microsoft acquisition of LinkedIn which (although it seems like a lot longer), only closed officially about this time last year. It has been a pretty interesting, innovative, and fascinating year for the largest professional social network. Since LinkedIn is such an important and influential technology for organizations and individual professionals alike, it seemed like a good time to reflect back on the year and to speculate a bit on what might lie ahead.
In the HRE Column, I dig a little bit into some of LinkedIn's recent product announcements, look at how the Microsoft angle is beginning to play out and how LinkedIn could evolve moving forward. I hope to have some execs from LinkedIn on an upcoming HR Happy Hour Show totalk about some of these ideas in more depth.
Having said that, here's a taste of the HRE piece titled 'Betting on LinkedIn'
I recently was invited to attend a quarterly product update from the folks at LinkedIn Talent Solutions, an online event where the product and marketing teams provide demonstrations and details about new product initiatives and capabilities that are (or are about to be) released. I get these kinds of invites from solution providers quite often, and admittedly do not usually attend -- either I am busy planning the annual HR Tech Conference or I simply don't get all that excited by incremental updates to existing platforms or solutions.
But I made an exception in this particular case and watched this most recent LinkedIn update. The reasons why were twofold: I had some extra time; and I was interested in one particular update that LinkedIn planned to share information regarding the integration of LinkedIn information with Microsoft Word in the context of a user creating a resume.
And, since Microsoft finished its $26.2-billion acquisition of LinkedIn about a year ago now, I figured it was an appropriate time to reflect on that industry development, as well as some new capabilities being added to the platform, the challenges the company faces, and what might be coming next.
On its latest product update webcast, LinkedIn showcased two new initiatives that reflect its continued need to provide value to two distinct constituencies: HR and talent-acquisition professionals; and its rank-and-file members. Each obviously have very different needs and goals.
The first enhancement for organizational users of its Talent Solutions products was a new performance summary report, which provides them with a simple but comprehensive overview of organizational activity and results on the platform. On one dashboard, HR and talent management professionals can see data such as the number of hires who were "influenced" by candidates viewing company profiles and content on LinkedIn prior to being hired; the effectiveness and response rates of candidate outreach; and most interestingly to me, the top five companies that organizations are losing and winning talent I can recall working at an organization where we were suddenly losing lots of talented sales reps over a short period of time, and had to scramble (and pull up lots of individual LinkedIn profiles) to figure out which competitors were poaching them. We would have loved to have had this information in one place.
The other new capability -- and probably the more innovative development -- was the announcement of a deeper integration of LinkedIn data with Microsoft Word. For users drafting a resume in Word, information from other LinkedIn profiles is used to help craft a resume. This Resume Assistant asks them to provide a job role of interest and then surfaces examples from LinkedIn of typical work-experience summaries and skills descriptors
Read the rest at HR Executive Online...
If you liked the piece you can sign up over at HRE to get the Inside HR Tech Column emailed to you each month. There is no cost to subscribe, in fact, I may even come over and re-surface your driveway, take your dog for a walk, rake up your leaves, and eat your leftover pumpkin pie.
Have a great day and Happy Day Before Thanksgiving!