The Future of Work Podcast

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Dan Shapero is the Vice President of Talent Solutions, Careers, and Learning at LinkedIn. Prior to this, Dan held several positions at LinkedIn, from Vice President of Talent Solutions and Insights to Vice President of North America Sales, Hiring Solutions. He has also served as the Manager of Bain & Company, as Senior Marketing Manager of Paramark, as Product Marketing Manager of Zembu, and as an advisor for Dropbox.

LinkedIn currently has over 575 million members around the world. They are the world’s largest professional networking site. The idea originated to provide a platform for professionals to join and start to run their careers much like a startup would think about building their own businesses. Over the course of LinkedIn’s history different capabilities have evolved. They started with 300 employees in 2008 and currently, in 2018, employ over 12,000 employees.

Three things LinkedIn offers employees:
1. Every two weeks they have a company all hands meeting hosted by the CEO Jeff Weiner
2. They have a thing called InDay. Once a month, people are encouraged to clear their calendars, invest in themselves and invest in their teams
3. A program where every employee, every year, gets a budget of money to apply towards any number of things that help make their life a little easier.

When asked how work today compares with work 10 to 20 years ago, Dan says the biggest changes are around talent.

“If you look at the most important companies in the world, if you look at the companies that we tend to talk about in the news and the areas that are really driving industry, the new reality is that companies are realizing that they win or lose on their people.”

Because of this, there’s a new focus on how to help people really thrive at work

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LinkedIn has done some research on the idea of ‘career sleepwalking’, which is when someone is in a role that they aren’t sure they want to be in, but they just don’t know how to get out of it. Dan says there’s a whole population of people – as large as 40% in certain categories -who are ‘career sleepwalking’.

There is a ton of window shopping on LinkedIn for careers. People go and look at jobs that are either different by industry, different by function, different by location, and as a crazy stat, near 22% of people on LinkedIn say that “they really fell into their current job versus actively choosing it”. And another 23% say that they feel like they’re on a treadmill going nowhere.

Dan’s advice for sleepwalkers or those on a career ‘treadmill’:

1. Visualize a path to make change
2. Find a friend to nurture your career path
3. Find a role model to help understand the steps to take
4. Have a plan B if it doesn’t work out

What You Will Learn In This Episode:
● What do non-HR people need to understand about HR?
● How employment has changed over the last few decades
● Three unique things going on at LinkedIn
● Dan’s view of Millennials
● What is the future of HR?
● How LinkedIn is doing perks differently
● What is Glint and why LinkedIn acquired them
● Suggestions to pivot your career path

Link from the episode:
Dan Shapero on LinkedIn

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