LinkedIn – university of the future?

It is never too late to learn something new. There are numerous courses available online – many are free. Topics vary from learning how to make home brewed beer to making websites. To complete such a course would normally take anywhere between 30 minutes and couple of hours for something simple. Some courses can take as long as couple of months.

How can taking a course like that benefit your employment? That’s simple: listing the course in your resume will make you more desirable candidate for a potential employer and will show you are persistent and motivated to learn. Many jobs have a training system in place and showing you are hardworking will only increase your chances.

Taking the first step in online learning may seem scary and hard – you need to find time and motivate yourself a lot. Luckily, many courses start off relatively low. For example, CodeAcademy has brilliant beginner HTML course explaining in detail all the bricks and stones of how a normal website is build. Following along is easy and interactive. If in trouble, there are little helpers. Obviously the team have analyzed problematic points and taken care of them.

Now what does it all have to do with LinkedIn you would ask. Well, as we all know, LinkedIn is a sort of social networking site for professionals and recruiters. What many don’t know is that companies are actually looking for potential staff right off the site. Making your profile look presentable, up to date with latest info and trainings might just increase your chances of getting that highly desired job. Great feature is the possibility to see who has visited your profile – maybe it was the company of your dreams?

Latest news revealed that LinkedIn has big plans – they are aiming at a much more connected and automated platform that would pick your ideal job from millions out there and recommend you the right course to fill the missing training. Well, that sound just right – with a little work on your side you might get just in the right place.

Colleges and universities have been in trouble for a while now, ever since the beginning of the Internet era. Possibility of sharing knowledge and easy access to data allowed millions of people to educate themselves, sharpen their skills and assist others. Kids who learned how to use the system for their good have become internet gurus with millions following them. Its not the status that counts anymore – it’s the amount of clicks. Anyone can become a professor of science or arts. Here, however, are some hidden dangers – we need to make sure these so called “professors” actually know what they are talking about. And that’s difficult to know if you are a complete beginner at something yourself.

Courseware, as they call it, is a software that was supposedly going to disrupt the college education system. The new model means interactive, engaging courses where members can share their experiences, ask questions and evolve as a group or all by themselves. Some say it didn’t happen and that’s for a good reason – they lacked credential and basically dropped to the level of YouTube tutorials. The future lies somewhere else.

That’s where LinkedIn is hoping to step in with the introduction of so called education marketplace. After all, it had proven itself in the case of smartphone apps, so why wouldn’t it be popular in other areas? I guess, we would have to wait and see. For now, the ambitions are high – LinkedIn is looking to create a working profile for everyone, connect with every company, add every possible job there is out there. Additionally, there is going to be a representation of every college or university.

By acquiring Lynda.com, LinkedIn is about to position themselves as an ultimate, universal training platform that aims to connect individuals with necessary training resources to fulfil their dreams of getting that dream job. What this actually means is that LinkedIn will own the training courses. So in the end we will all be signing up, one way or another. I can see it replacing other social media sites, very soon.