Loads of muckety-mucks from the tech and social media worlds spent some time at the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland recently and here are the 4 things that caught my eye in Mike Arrington’s (Tech Crunch) brief chat with Reid Hoffman the CEO of LinkedIn:
MA: In December you took the CEO role back from Dan Nye. Your reasons for that are well published, but now that you are CEO again, what are you short term goals for the company?
RH: We have a number of tools but most people don’t know how to use them. Lots of ways of finding the right information. (READERS: FEEL FREE TO CONTACT BELLA DOMAIN FOR HELP W/THIS.) Focusing on product marketing or merchandising them.
MA: How can people use LinkedIn in a tough economy to get a job?
RH: Be present, fill out your profile, which will help people find you. It’s essentially SEO. Second, be active in using it. First, searching, if you are looking for contracting gigs, reach out to companies you want to work with, tell them you are available. Second, use the answers service. Ask questions that generate discussions. Or answer to demonstrate expertise.
MA: How many users come to the site? Registered users?
RH: Over 34 million registered, 9 million in Europe, growing by over 1 million every 17 days. Twelve million people visit every month.
MA: How is the economy affecting your business?
RH: Everyone knew we’d get an uptick from job seekers, free agents, consultants. A pleasant surprise is the recruiting space, all of our customers are keeping or increasing their spend. Recruiting business is growing. We have three principle lines of revenue, advertising, subscriptions from users, recruiting tools.