Articles by Rob Getzschman
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We’re always looking for creative ways to help our users learn the ins and outs of LinkedIn. Knowing that the average office worker can only watch a screenshot tutorial for a few seconds before the onset of spontaneous narcolepsy, we developed a fun, retro-themed webseries for small and medium business owners with the help of FedEx.
We call it “LinkedIn’s Timeless Guide To Small Business Success.”
- Topics:
- LinkedIn for Small Business
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If you’ve got a highly marketable skillset, should you set up shop and find clients? Or should you seek out a lucrative contract with a promising corporation? Perhaps the answer is best determined by the professional temperament of an individual, but sometimes it’s just a matter of the right opportunity at the right time. Web marketing consultant Jeff Torchon has done both – and with the help of LinkedIn, he found the transition surprisingly “quick and easy”.
Last year Jeff was happy running an independent consulting gig when two recruiters reached out to him via LinkedIn, offering director positions at major national firms. He interviewed with both, and one firm turned out to be one of his current clients. The proposition caused him to consider corporate life again. Around the same time, a couple of potential clients reached out to Jeff via InMail. Between two job offers and new client opportunities, Jeff had a great set of options to choose from. Considering the strong relationship, he decided to take the job with his existing client.
- Topics:
- LinkedIn Users
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A common temptation in building a company is to go after too many businesses at once. The best path to business success, according to Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, is the narrow one.
“I’m a big fan of companies that know what they want to be and stay to that,” Jason told us. His online video service Hulu is a good example. The company’s mission is “to help people find and enjoy the world’s premium video content when, where and how they want it.”
- Topics:
- Best Of,
- LinkedIn for Small Business,
- LinkedIn Users
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Sometimes business opportunities grow legs. Gregg Spiridellis found out in 2004 when a video by his digital studio, JibJab, took off. Though JibJab had been producing since 1999, their video “This Land” touched a nerve during the heated election year and was soon ubiquitous, even being played in Antarctica and the International Space Station. And this before the advent of YouTube.
Gregg was inundated with offers, emails… and LinkedIn requests. Having never heard of the site before, he sent off a “flaming” email to customer service. But Gregg now calls LinkedIn “the best thing in the world”, and uses it regularly to manage the growth of his studio. He’s used LinkedIn Jobs to recruit and find the best talent, saving tens of thousands in recruiter fees. He reviews polished profiles to compose job specs. And perhaps most impressively, he conducts competitive intelligence research on LinkedIn Companies to help reverse-engineer his own org as it grows.
- Topics:
- Best Of,
- LinkedIn for Small Business,
- LinkedIn Users
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Last year about this time, Kay offered some New Year’s resolutions on how to jump-start your career. As we kick off 2009, many are looking for the best ways to find meaningful employment, and a good place to start is one’s own network. A recommendation from a trusted colleague can outweigh a stack of Ivy League résumés. In fact, when Randall Rothenberg went looking for a Chief Officer for the Interactive Advertising Bureau in 2007, he turned to his LinkedIn network first.
“I realized … the place to go to begin that search was going to be my LinkedIn network,” Randall told us. “If anyone can lead me to the kind of person with the kinds of capabilities I was looking for, it’s this set of people.” Randall posted the job on LinkedIn and began filtering candidates.
- Topics:
- Best Of,
- LinkedIn Users
