Introduction
Do you know how people would get jobs a few years ago? They had to go from company to company with their resumes to attend job interviews. People would know about job openings through newspapers or by other sources. Through those sources, they would know when and where the job interviews were being held for which post. More than getting a job knowing where the interviews were conducted for a specific job that an individual was looking for was a huge deal. It was a similar case for employers. Hiring people was a huge task for them. First, they had to get the word out. To do this they had to print ads in newspapers, they would go to job consultancy services, and so on. But the problem was they would not get the employees with specifications they are looking for. In such cases, they would conduct interviews again.
But this is not the case today. Everything is online now. These days the internet is cheaper than ever and people can access all kinds of information through it. You can literally get almost anything done using the internet including getting jobs or finding people to hire. And if you’re a millennial who is looking for a job you know where to upload your resume. That’s right!! LinkedIn. LinkedIn has made it very easy for people to find the jobs they like. It has also helped the employers to find the right candidates to hire with the amount of experience they wish for. For those of you who don’t know, LinkedIn is like an employment-oriented social media platform. It is a platform where employers can post jobs and job seekers can post their resumes.
Let’s dive into more details about this online service for employment.
History of LinkedIn
LinkedIn was founded by Reid Hoffman and other individuals who were the founding members of Socialnet.com and PayPal in December 2002. The company’s series A funding was done by Sequoia capital in late 2003. After that, it took LinkedIn a year to reach one million users. LinkedIn saw its first month of profitability in March 2006. Just after a year, LinkedIn reached 10 million users. As soon as it reached this number of users they knew it would be great if they had a mobile version. So LinkedIn launched a mobile version of its website in 2008. Soon after that Greylock Partnerspartners, Sequoia capital, and a few other venture capital firms bought 5% of the company’s stake for $53 million making the valuation of the company more than a billion dollars.
After this LinkedIn opened its office in Mumbai and Sydney to start its operations in the Asia Pacific region. Then it opened its international headquarters in Dublin in 2010. In the same year, the Tiger Global Management LLC invested $20 million dollar investment making the valuation of the company $2 billion and also acquired Mspoke. It was also listed as No.10 on Silicon valley insider’s list of the top 100 most valuable startups. In January 2011 LinkedIn went public and traded its first shares under the symbol LNKD for $45 a share. The shares of the company to 171% the same day and closed at 109% that is $94.25 well above $45. In the same year, LinkedIn earned more in advertising than Twitter and increased it, employees, from 500 to 2100. In 2016 things changed when shares dropped by 43.6% and it lost $10 billion market capitalization.
Acquisition by Microsoft
Microsoft made its largest acquisition to date when it acquired LinkedIn for $26.2 billion on 13th June 2016. It paid $196 per share all of which was done through debt-financed transaction and cash. Though Microsoft acquired the company it ensured that LinkedIn would remain independent and retain its brand. So it should be well known by now that Microsoft owns LinkedIn. Jeff Weiner who is the CEO of LinkedIn in said that that the reason for selling the company to Microsoft was the leadership of Satya Nadella, the CEO of Microsoft. Some of the ideas shared by Jeff Weiner explained how it could integrate LinkedIn into Windows, Microsoft apps, Office, Outlook, and Calendar. Weiner thought that LinkedIn would have a great opportunity to grow if it joined forces with Microsoft. In his own words, Jeff Weiner stated that it was a great move to integrate with Microsoft.
He said in his letter that they no longer had to look at tech giants like Amazon, Apple, Microsoft, and Facebook and imagine how it would feel to operate at that level. Because if they joined Microsoft they will be at the same level as Microsoft. He further said that it will be great as their will pressure or compromise to make long term investment. They did it to ensure that the economic downturn does not affect them in taking steps to make themselves better for their users. Not only that Microsoft also announced Reid Hoffman who was one of the key founders of LinkedIn joined its board. This was a great move by Microsoft as it did not know what e do next after making PCs that are used by almost all companies in the world. CEO Satya Nadella’s appointment was the key to new developments in Microsoft.
Developments of LinkedIn after the acquisition
Things worked out well for LinkedIn after it was acquired by Microsoft. Using the integration of LinkedIn Microsoft was able to connect the progressional network with its products in a better way. By 2017 94% of all B2B marketers were using LinkedIn to distribute their content. In January of the same year, LinkedIn introduced its new application for the desktop. This new version was introduced to improve the user experience of people using it on both desktops and mobiles. It even made changes in the application by removing some features that were not used heavily. In 2019 LinkedIn added the global features that help freelancers to get discovered and launched LinkedIn Events later that year.
Conclusion
Whether it is the professionals who have been in the business for ages or individuals who are newly graduated from universities everyone is using LinkedIn. If you don’t have a LinkedIn account but you are doing a job the first advice you receive from other colleagues is to create a LinkedIn account. Posting your CV on LinkedIn makes it easy for you to find a job. There is no other service of this kind that is as popular as LinkedIn. Frankly, if you don’t even need any other service as long as you have a LinkedIn account as all of the businesses and recruiters search for candidates on LinkedIn. If you are someone who is looking for a job then create your Linkedinedin account right now.
