Linkedin Blog

Are some names more successful than others? Is your name influencing your career (as David Brooks suggests, noting that Dennis is more likely to become a dentist and Lawrence a lawyer)? Or are both your career and choice of name influenced by factors like personality and values?

Any attempt to explore these questions would need some cold, hard data.  LinkedIn is the perfect place to start: you can find 100 million professionals, their first names and their corresponding career histories (or, as our data science team calls it, a fun project waiting to happen).  I took advantage of one of our InDays to examine the correlations between people’s first names and their career choices. We’d like to share our findings with you in an infographic designed by Anita Lillie:

Thanks for your comments, encouragement and participation! For the benefit of those who couldn’t watch the Technovation Challenge pitch night livestream, here’s the video – Ed.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=slPhb50JLys&fmt=22]

Many of our readers have stumbled upon the livestream of LinkedIn Speaker Series – featuring interviews with transformative individuals from different realms of professional life. We’re glad to have hosted visionary leaders like Newark Mayor Cory Booker, personal finance guru Suze Orman, best-selling author Deepak Chopra and others in the recent past. Most of these interviews last roughly an hour followed by questions from our audience – employees and guests – gathered in our Mountain View office.

Given tons of requests, we’ve decided to stream all of our Speaker Series videos on YouTube. Check out our past Speaker Series videos here.

Ed. note: This post is a part of our continuing blog series featuring our employees. Here, we hear from our very own Adam Barker – a senior designer who builds interesting things from scratch. Here, he tells you more about some of his interesting projects, and why he’s so excited to be at LinkedIn.

Not everyone sees a blank canvas in a foam latte or a pile of car parts.