Linkedin Blog

A few months ago, our CEO Jeff Weiner wrote an op-ed in Fortune Magazine describing the “other” unemployment crisis;  that despite historically high unemployment rates we still have more than three million unfilled job opportunities in our country, and what we could do to solve it.

Last week, he had a chance to revisit this theme in his speech to roughly 1,000 local CEOs and business leaders at the Bay Area Council’s 2012 Outlook Conference, where the theme was “The Next Human Leap”.

Once a month, we set aside a Friday for employees to focus on investing in themselves and their community. It’s a day to spend time outside their daily task list. The theme for November’s InDay was Culture. Check out other InDay posts here. – Ed.

We kicked off the day with our first cultural Top Chef competition. For the first round, ten fearless competitors created a dish related to their secret ingredient which was the culture from which they culled the recipe for their dish.  They were randomly assigned either Italian, Spanish, German, Brazilian, or Japanese as their culture and had 48 hours to prepare a dish.

It’s no question that when it comes to American politics this fall, jobs and the economy are the hottest issues around. A couple of weeks ago, LinkedIn hosted a town hall-style event with President Obama. Hundreds of thousands of our members viewed the event, either live or archived. And thousands more participated by voting in LinkedIn Polls or asking questions via the Putting America Back to Work group.

Now it’s time to shift parties. LinkedIn is excited to work with Bloomberg and Washington Post on a Republican debate happening tonight in New Hampshire. This is the first debate of the 2012 Republican presidential campaign focused solely on the economy. Our members will help compile data and insights to inform questions asked by moderators Charlie Rose, Karen Tumulty, and Julianna Goldman.

Over the next couple of hours, we’ll be moderating a Town Hall with President Barack Obama focused on economic opportunity in our country and putting America back to work. The Town Hall hosted at the Computer History Museum will feature questions from a live audience, as well as questions culled from thousands contributed by LinkedIn members over the past week.

As part of our vision to create economic opportunity for all professionals, LinkedIn has also partnered with the Startup America Partnership to help founders of young businesses manage their professional identity, connect with the right talent and access advanced tools to help them grow their businesses. LinkedIn will be making a donation of up to 100,000 free subscriptions to Startup America Partnership entrepreneurs –  a value of $5 million.

The Startup America Partnership is an organization working to help young, high-growth companies succeed in order to accelerate job growth in America and was launched at the White House in response to President Obama’s call to celebrate, inspire, and accelerate entrepreneurship throughout the nation.