As the leading professional social network, LinkedIn has access to an unmatched data set of career skills, education, job progressions, etc. The possibilities of what can be done with that data are amazing - through analysis of their insights, LinkedIn has the capability to change the game in HR and recruiting practices.
How? Let's say you're a university student who's studying Marketing and Business Management, and you're interested in a career involved in music and/or film. LinkedIn can take those basic data points and map them against their entire social graph of more than 433 million members, showing you the ideal career path for you to take based on other members who've already succeeded in similar careers. More than that, for employers, LinkedIn's already started to build systems that take into account the listed details of your employees, their interests their education, then highlights relevant job applicants for outstanding positions based on ideal fit when matched against those other variables (and data has already shown that algorithms can be better than humans at selecting new hires).
There's simply no one else who has an equivalent amount of career insight and intelligence available, and now, LinkedIn has used that data to highlight the businesses who are leading the way in terms of career popularity, where people most want to work. And it's not just global either, LinkedIn has listed the most desired employers in Australia, Brazil, France, India, U.K. and the U.S.
Here's how they did it, and what you can learn from the top brands.
Highlighting 'Top Attractors'
As noted by Daniel Roth, LinkedIn's Executive Editor, LinkedIn's 'Top Attractors' listing is "the first ranking of its kind to be based entirely on actions of users."
"As the world's largest professional network, LinkedIn has a constant pulse on what job seekers are doing about their careers. Our insights team, working with our global editorial team, analyzed literally billions of actions taken by our 433+ million members to come up with a blended score that we used to rank the winners in each geography."
Those actions include:
- Job applications: Both the views and actual applications on job postings featured on LinkedIn.
- Engagement: How many non-employees attempted to view and connect with a company's employees; views on a company's career page; reach and engagement of content and growth in followers over the past year.
- New Hire Staying Power: After a new employee joins, how long they stay with the company
From this, LinkedIn determined the most popular employers on the platform, though the companies listed also needed to have more than 500 employees to qualify.
Also relevant, the listing was compiled before Microsoft announced that it was buying LinkedIn, but since that deal hasn't closed as yet, and Microsoft had no ties to LinkedIn during the data-gathering period, Microsoft is still included in the list (LinkedIn employees are excluded for obvious reasons).
Passion and Purpose
Business journalist Suzy Welch got an early look at the 'Top Attractors' listing and has offered some lessons brands can take from those highlighted.
As noted by Welch:
"What does it take to get the best people to work for you? Based on an unprecedented data analysis conducted by LinkedIn, it comes down to two things: Excitement and opportunity."
Welch highlights five points reflected in the data from the Top Attractors listing.
- The Top Attractors are unusually tech heavy. "Tech comprises less than 10% of the American GDP, but every single one of the top 10 companies on the Top Attractors list is in the tech space"
- The Top Attractors tend to be led by founders. "The vast majority - 65% - of the top 20 Top Attractors have their founders at the helm, most of them bearing names that are as familiar as family. (Think Zuckerberg, Bezos, and Musk.)"
- Popular, consumer-facing, even glamorous, brands helps attract talent. "Of the top 20 companies to land on the Top Attractors list, only three wouldn't be considered household names"
- There's little correlation between a company's size and its appeal to job seekers (except perhaps conversely). "The top ten companies in the Fortune 500 employ about 4 million people. By comparison, the same cohort of Top Attractors employ about 583,000"
- The Top Attractors list contains a high proportion of organizations known for giving their employees generous benefits.
Roth provides examples of key benefits from some of the listed companies in his post:
- PwC boasts of the ability to create compressed workweeks, working longer hours fewer days a week.
- Westpac Group has stopped assigning desks in multiple offices. Now, employees sit in "neighborhoods," and can work wherever best suits them: whether that's a standing desk by the windows or a quiet conference table.
- Suncorp Group allows employees to permanently work from home.
Though in her summary, Welch also makes note that the top employers have strong identities, they stand for something 'distinctive and enduring'. In this sense, Welch believes the benefits part of the equation, while in her top five trends, is less relevant than some would expect:
"Essentially, the companies who top the charts here seem to reflect what so many of us feel in our bones just by living and working in today's ever-changing and uncertain economy: people are hungry for jobs that give them meaning, purpose, and a future."
In a separate post, LinkedIn also highlights that many of the listed brands also have very strong content marketing scores, showing that they're using content to "stay top of mind with their target audience, including new hires".
Top Prospects
The full LinkedIn 'Top Attractors' listing includes a key summary of each business along with a link to the current outstanding positions at the company as listed on LinkedIn.
It's a fascinating report with some amazing insights into company culture and what's attracting job seekers to businesses - on LinkedIn specifically, but also more generally, highlighting the workplace trends and behaviours that the leading brands in each nation are recognizing and nurturing in order to attract the best talent and stay ahead of the game.
And given the evolving tech landscape, attracting and retaining the top talent could, arguably, be more important than ever.
You can read the full LinkedIn 'Top Attractors' report here.