Home > Monthly Archives

Articles posted in August 2011

  • LinkedIn Profile Tips for Non-traditional Careers

    Lindsey Pollak, August 30, 2011

    Due to the realities of the economy and employment market today, it’s increasingly common to moonlight outside of work hours, start a small business on the side, consult for a variety of clients or, as The New York Times recently reported, work five or six part-time jobs simultaneously to pay the rent.

    There are pros and cons to every situation, of course, and many people prefer to earn a living without a full-time, steady job. But there’s one area where “non-traditional” employment can pose a particular challenge: when creating a professional social media profile.

    Read More »

  • Rocking Headlines—and Footwear

    Krista Canfield, August 29, 2011
    Ed. note: This is a continuation of our series of blog posts featuring our colleagues’ stories. Today, we hear from Krista Canfield, a senior corporate communications manager about her journey at LinkedIn. Oh, and did we mention her shoe collection is just as impressive as her resume?

    Storytelling is my true passion. Well, that and a great pair of shoes. At four years old I got my first fancy footwear, a pair of ice skates. After balancing a competitive figure skating career and the life of a regular public school kid for fourteen years, I decided to head off to college and pursue another passion, journalism. So I shifted gears and landed at Syracuse, focusing on finance and broadcast journalism. Back then I could only dream of working in the CNN newsroom or at The New York Times. But in my role today in our corporate communications team, I’ve been lucky enough to do both.

    It’s definitely been an adventure getting here, but I’m not one to shy away from a challenge (you should see some of the heels I can walk in!). I took my first reporting job in South Dakota and didn’t even know what a tornado siren was. By the time I decided to head west, I was actually the one chasing storms, and news stories, in the KDLT-TV news truck.

    Read More »

  • The Top 5 Stories You Shared on LinkedIn This Week (Aug. 19-25)

    Daniel Roth, August 26, 2011

    This series covers the top 5 stories that our members are sharing on LinkedIn Today. You can check out Daniel Roth‘s column here. – Ed

    Unless you were living off the grid somewhere, you saw the news that Steve Jobs stepped down as CEO of Apple on Wednesday. It was the biggest business event of the week — and the flood of articles and tweets was impossible to ignore. Yet the most shared story across LinkedIn centered on another tech personality, investor Marc Andreessen, who wrote an essay for the Wall Street Journal called “Why Software Is Eating The World.”

    Read More »

  • Cultivating employees’ entrepreneurial spirit

    Frank Hattann MSc (HONS), August 25, 2011

    Since 2007, LinkedIn has been running monthly Hackdays (now, part of our Indays) that encourages our engineering teams to work on new and innovative projects. So far, we’ve had over 200 contributions, more than 50 winners, 14 projects featured on LinkedIn Labs, and over 15 products that have made it onto the LinkedIn site.

    In a brown bag session a few months ago with our CEO Jeff Weiner, Iain Gilmore from our Marketing Solutions team in London asked if there was an opportunity for non technical employees to take part in Hackday. Jeff saw no reason for non-techies not to be involved and in true Captain Kirk style said “make it so” and thus INtrepreneur Day in Europe was born.

    Read More »

  • InDay: What do Mathletes and Athletes have in common?

    Nick Hartley, August 24, 2011
    What do Alex Trebek, Bob Barker, and Pat Sajak have in common? Besides being dashingly charming and sophisticated, this trio had the privilege of hosting world renowned television game shows.

    Last Friday, during our monthly InDay [1], I played host to the inaugural academic decathlon at LinkedIn with folks competing to answer questions on everything from Math to Logical Reasoning. Teams of 6-9 people participated, comprised of colleges on the west coast — USC, Stanford, and Berkeley — to the east coast, with schools such as MIT, Harvard, and Duke. This was an all out academic brawl. The tension in the air was thick.

    While everyone in the room huddled around their team’s table ready to hit the buzzer, I was standing up at the front stage, thinking about where I was just over a year ago.It was a scorching hot June day in Los Angeles when I was sitting at USC’s commencement, listening to Arnold Schwarzenegger share his knowledge with the graduating class. Between the movie references from Kindergarten Cop and Terminator, my mind wandered off into a daydream, dreading the meek prospects of entering the workforce.

    Read More »
« Older entries