LinkedIn is the world’s largest professional networking platform, designed to connect professionals, job seekers, employers, and organizations across a broad range of industries. The for-profit company was founded in 2002 and launched in 2003 by founders Reid Hoffman and a team of co-founders including Allen Blue, Konstantin Guericke, Eric Ly, and Jean-Luc Vaillant.
Initially funded by private investors and venture capital firms, including Sequoia Capital and Greylock Partners, Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016 for $26.2 billion. Since then, LinkedIn is owned and funded by Microsoft, operating as an independent subsidiary. Revenue comes from premium subscriptions, advertising, talent solutions (recruitment services), and learning solutions.
The company's mission is "To connect the world’s professionals to make them more productive and successful." The company serves multiple purposes within this mission, including:
- Professional Networking
- Users create profiles (essentially digital resumes) which can be used to connect with others in their field or industry.
- Job Search and Recruiting
- Employers post jobs, and job seekers apply directly through the platform.
- LinkedIn uses AI and algorithms to match candidates to roles.
- Learning and Development
- LinkedIn Learning offers thousands of online courses on business, technology, and creative skills.
- Business and Thought Leadership
- Professionals publish articles, blogs, and social media post.
- Companies build brand presence.
- Industry and thought leaders engage audiences.
- Sales and Marketing
- Through LinkedIn Sales Navigator and ad tools, businesses use the platform to find leads and reach customers.
Examples of LinkedIn's Work
- LinkedIn for Nonprofits
- Offers discounted tools and outreach capabilities to help nonprofit organizations recruit talent and raise visibility.
- Talent Insights
- An analytics product that gives HR professionals data on hiring trends, talent availability, and competitive benchmarking.
- LinkedIn Learning
- Offers skill-building courses ranging from Excel to emotional intelligence to leadership training.
- Skills Path
- A partnership initiative that helps job seekers gain new skills and connect to opportunities based on demonstrated capabilities rather than degrees alone.
- Economic Graph
- A data-driven initiative that maps global labor markets, highlighting trends in hiring, skills, and economic shifts. LinkedIn shares these insights with governments, researchers, and nonprofits.
- For its research on skills, LinkedIn's methodology is to measure the growth of skills based on three pillars: skill acquisition, hiring success, and emerging demand (growth rates for all metrics are measured by comparing LinkedIn data from January 1 to December 31 with the same in the previous year):
- Skill acquisition counts the rate at which members are adding new skills to their profile.
- Hiring success is measured by the share of a skill possessed by members who have been hired in the past year.
- Emerging demand measures the increased presence of a given skill in paid job postings.
