LinkedIn – thank you so much! It’s not even my birthday but you’ve just made my life so much easier… I can follow company pages and their updates now? For free? And you’ll send me daily updates? Yes! And companies can’t block me like some do on Twitter? Love it some more.
Okay, okay. So why is it that I’m so happy? Well, I’ve been navigating LinkedIn for a number of years now, and pretty much thought I had down to a science how to keep an eye on competitors. I was delighted when I could RSS my Linkedin updates and will admit that was becoming a bit cumbersome to scroll through, but you’ve just made my life blissfully easy with Company “Follow” feature.
No more will I need to queue up competitors one by one. I’ve set it up so I get updates daily… to my inbox. I see who’s coming, who’s going, who’s been promoted. I can get a handle on trends and can certainly see if anyone’s cherry picking employees from certain organizations. I’m getting obvious detail on what departments are hiring and where there is none. I know this is all user generated information… but damn, people are certainly providing a lot of information! All in the name of networking.
This is pretty sweet.
And yes, I decided not to follow my typical “bull in a china shop” mentality and hide my member activity feed for the time being. I thought I’d make these companies work for it to figure out if I’m cyberstalking them. It’s not that hard, they can just check their profile and click on “followers”. And yeah, I did mention they can’t block me, right?
What it really means though? I’ve heard rumblings from HR Pros about how they don’t want their employees on LinkedIn – there’s too much company information there for competitors to poach. They forbid references, even in a social media environment. Will this add more fuel to that fire? Will companies demand a block button? Or the dropping of the follow feature? Or the option to blitz their company off of the site? We’ll see. But for recruiters, for the time being, this is great news for us.
Hat tip to Mike Merrill for breaking this news…
i’m on the fence sort of. i like your ideas on this new linkedin feature, but this blogger makes a few interesting points as well:
http://www.readwriteweb.com/archives/why_does_linkedin_keep_doing_things_that_dont_make.php
Hi Danny- I like the RWW item….and wonder if the mindset in it is that Linkedin is a networking tool.
I’ve picked several companies to follow and got a nice list this a.m. in my email box showing me all the activity in the last 24 hours. With one company I can see that they just hired a slew of Imaging Specialists. With another in the promotions section I can see career paths and get alternate job titles.
I mean if Linkedin wants my .02 I’ve love it I could sub-divide my companies I’m following into lists…
So the guy in the video doesn’t like the change from a usability standpoint…. i work for a software company, so I get that…
But, if you’re in the talent game, which I don’t think he is, you just have to ask yourself one question – are you better off, with or without the change? I think I’m better off with it – much better off…
For a talent pro’s reservations, see Jen McClure’s tweet: http://twitter.com/CincyRecruiter/status/13133546247
KD
I agree that RWW makes some interesting points. But that said, it’s a start, right? I get the email with the info on the companies I am following, and it seems to be sufficient for me. It seems like he’s looking for all of the info that he wants in one place. It’s a lofty goal, and would likely make the pages a little too busy. The beauty of LinkedIn is that we can get bits of info and research the rest that we are looking for. This is a long overdue feature.
As KD mentioned, how much you like this may depend on what seat you sit in.