LinkedIn is one of my favorite productivity tools. If you’ve spent any time with it, you know already that it’s not just a site for people looking for employment. The LinkedIn site is a powerful networking and knowledge share tool that promotes collaboration for professionals in all industries. Recently, LinkedIn expanded its Company Profiles by adding the ability for individuals to follow companies.
To follow a company, simply perform a search on the company name to find its profile.
Then from the Company Profile page select the link to follow the company.
On your home page, you’ll soon see a section for company profiles. A summary of the events related to the companies you follow is listed in this summary display.
All of the information you see on the company summary is available in the detail section of the company profile. But bringing the information to your home page in summary form let’s you know when changes are made within the company.
How is this feature relevant to you? Here are four reasons why you should care about it:
Competitive Analysis
The LinkedIn company profile shows you recent hires, title changes, departures, and job postings of a company. If you work for a competitor to the company this gives some insight into the type of positions the company is placing. For new hires, particularly upper management, you can gain insight into future actions by looking at the backgrounds of the individuals recently hired.
Obviously, the data in this view is only as good as what people update in their profile or if Human Resources posts jobs on the LinkedIn board. But there is no greater source of information on employee information than LinkedIn. More and more professionals are adding their information to their profiles each year. Bottom line, this is a great source of information to see what a competitor is doing with their personnel.
Industry/Company Research
Within the company profile there is a section that summarizes statistics about the company including locations, divisions, revenue, number of employees, industry, etc. If you are researching a company or industry for a marketing plan, company stability, company profile, or brand information then you may find relevant data in the company profile.
For example take a look at this company break down of Google.
(I found it interesting that Google employees are most connected to Microsoft.)
Other Key Statistics.
Now certainly the company statistics are not a replacement for Hoovers, Dun & Bradstreet, or other industry database. Those databases contain a wealth of financial data and statistics. What’s unique about LinkedIn is how it ties back to employees and profiles of those employees.
Job Opportunities
The summary view of the companies you follow contains a link to job postings for that specific company. If you are actively or passively looking for a new job and have targeted specific companies then the summary view is a quick way to scan postings without having to key search data. If you click on the link you’ll see the listing of all the postings with the ability to further filter and refine the search in the selection criteria.
Networking
LinkedIn was built to keep you in touch with your professional contacts. The value-ad is more than just a list though. In the company profile area LinkedIn will show you which of your contacts are employed with the company, or which have been employed in the past. That opens the door for you to reach out and reconnect with friends and colleagues that you may not have spoken with for a long time period. So setup a chat and reconnect!
