The IT Nerd

Today, LinkedIn released the first Canadian edition of Top Companies 2018: the most sought-after companies where people want to work in Canada. TD Bank takes the title of most desirable company, and Vancouver’s tech darling, Hootsuite, slides into the top 5. Canadian companies comprise over 75 per cent of the list with 19 of the 25 companies headquartered here.

The Top Companies results are based on the actions of LinkedIn’s more than 546 million professionals (over 14 million in Canada alone) and looks at four main pillars: interest in the company, engagement with the company’s employees, job demand and employee retention.

Canada’s Top Companies realize they must find new ways to woo professionals and set an example for the way corporate Canada treats employees. Among the themes emerging are: travel opportunities, experience as a new currency and family and health-related initiatives.

Here is what the highest ranked LinkedIn Top Companies are doing to attract and keep talent:

1. TD Bank Group: Employees feel like they have a voice thanks to a yearly feedback survey in which more than 80 per cent of employees said they felt engaged at work in 2016. One of the things employees rate the highest is flexible working hours.
2. RBC: Employees are encouraged to live healthy lifestyles and are offered a wellness program that rewards healthy behavior with credits employees can use toward things like gym memberships, workout classes and weight-loss programs.
3. Hootsuite: The company’s “stretch program” encourages employees to spend one day a week trying a new position.
4. Amazon: Amazon’s inventors have won more than 2,300 patents in the past year, covering everything from Kindle cases to predictive restaurant ordering.
5. KPMG Canada: The company’s Global Opportunities program has sent Canadian participants to work in overseas offices in the U.S., U.K., Australia, New Zealand, China and Switzerland.

The complete Canadian Top Companies list and research methodology are copied below. You can read the blog post featuring top companies across the world here and the Canada-specific list here.

Methodology:

The Top Companies list is a part of the LinkedIn List franchise, which celebrates companies and individuals making an impact in the professional world, and it spotlights the companies that attract and retain top talent globally. The list is fueled by the billions of actions of our 540M+ members to unveil where professionals really want to work and stay and looks at data including job seeker reach and interest, engagement, and retention paired with editorial lens.

Canada ranks among the top countries in terms of employee turnover, ranking above the global average (12.8 per cent) and the United States (13 per cent) in terms of employee attrition. Among the top reasons for leaving globally? A lack of opportunity to advance (45 per cent), as well as dissatisfaction with senior management (41 per cent) and the work environment/culture (36 per cent).

The latest LinkedIn study, which analyzed data from half-a-billion professionals to provide insights on places, sectors and jobs where attrition is highest, uncovered tech, retail and media as having the most “liquid” workforces — but each for very different reasons.

Global Turnover Rates – By Country 

1. France – 21.0%
2. United Kingdom – 17.6%
3. Australia – 17.5%
4. Canada – 16.0%
5. United States – 13.0%
6. Brazil – 10.9%
7. India – 8.7%
8. South Africa – 7.7%

Sectors with Highest Turnover Rates – Canada

1. Technology – Software – 16.9%
2. Retail & Consumer Products – 16.5%
3. Government/Edu/Non-Profit – 15.0%
4. Media & Entertainment – 13.9%
5. Telecommunications – 13.2%
6. Financial Services & Insurance – 13.1%
7. Technology – Hardware – 13.0%
8. Professional Services – 12.9%
9. Oil & Energy – 12.8%
10. Aero/Auto/Transport – 11.4%

High-demand and rising compensation within the tech industry led technology (software) to take the “top” turnover spot (16.9 per cent), as was the case globally. Retail—a historically high-churn sector—came in a close second with 16.5 per cent, with the rise of e-commerce and the decline of brick-and-mortar storefronts driving attrition rates higher. This was notably followed by government, education and non-profit at 15 per cent, with one of the highest rates globally.

For a deep dive into the results, including the sub-industries with the highest levels of turnover, as well as how companies can prevent turnover and plan around it, you can read the blog here.

Methodology:

Turnover rates are drawn from LinkedIn’s member data in 2017. They calculate turnover by taking the number of professionals who left their company in a given population (e.g., the retail sector, the restaurant industry, or data analysts), then dividing that number by the average amount of people in that given population in 2017. They consider professionals as leaving their jobs if they provide an end-date for their position at a company (excluding internal job changes within the same company).

They’ve also excluded contractors and other non-full-time-employees (e.g., interns, students, etc.), along with any positions that start and end on the same date. The turnover estimates here may be below actual turnover, due to a possible lag between the time someone leaves a company and when they update their LinkedIn profile to reflect that departure.

In honor of this year’s International Women’s Day, LinkedIn has released new research examining how women’s roles in the workforce have advanced over the past 40 years.

The findings show that while there have been gains towards economic parity, the progress for women has been slow: Over the past 10 years, the proportion of female leaders in the workforce has increased by an average of just over 2 percentage points among the 12 industries studied.

Other key findings include:

• More women are entering STEM fields than any other roles: STEM-based roles show the most change in female representation, with a nearly 25 per cent increase in female representation overall in the Software & IT industry and nearly 30 per cent increase in Hardware & Networking.
• However, not all STEM roles are attracting women at equal rates: The software development industry has seen very little change, with women making up just over 20 per cent of total professionals, and the number of female data analysts dropping more than 10 per cent.
• Women in leadership roles continue to make strides: When examining the shift of hiring of female leaders in the last eight years, the research found a higher rate of change among traditionally male-dominated industries like Software & IT Services (27 per cent increase in female leadership, manufacturing (26 per cent increase), and entertainment (24 per cent increase).

You can learn more in the following blog post,

METHODOLOGY

To generate this analysis, LinkedIn looked at a member’s first position after earning an Associate’s Degree or Bachelor’s Degree (limited to 4 years after graduation, and excluding internships) to understand what types of roles women were entering each decade. To generate growth figures, we compared women entering the workforce between 1978 – 1987 to those entering between 2008 – 2017 to understand the differences between the two decades. This data was examined at a global level across LinkedIn’s platform, however only countries where at least two-thirds of members had associated genders were included.

LinkedIn has just released its newest research in partnership with the Ministry of International Trade (MIT), ‘Understanding Trade Through International Connections,’ to help inform Ontario’s trade strategy, uncovering that Software & IT is the province’s most globally connected industry, particularly across small to medium-sized businesses.

The report leverages data from LinkedIn’s nearly 5 million Ontario members and uncovers opportunities for the province’s policymakers and businesses to improve ties with global trading partners, capitalize on existing employee relationships across business functions and better leverage industry strengths.

Key findings from the report include:

• Small and medium sized businesses are leading the way in international connectivity. Ontario’s Software & IT employees are the most highly connected across small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), even when compared to employees of large firms.
• Ontario’s international connections support a host of diverse industries. Software & IT is the province’s most globally connected industry, followed by Energy & Mining, Manufacturing, Transportation & Logistics, and Agriculture.
• Global connections exist across employee functions. Ontario businesses have a rich opportunity to tap into the global networks of their employees – IT employees are among the top five job functions that tend to have the largest percentage of international connections.
• There’s marked potential to grow trade with new international markets. Our research reveals that, compared to other provinces and states in Canada and the US, Ontario ranks the second highest in international connectivity, surpassed only by British Columbia. Middle Eastern countries, Brazil, Australia, Ireland and Nigeria show high connectivity, but lower trade value, indicating the potential to better leverage these connections to facilitate trade promotion.

You can also view the complete report here and read the blog post here.

One year since LinkedIn introduced Open Candidates – the discreet setting members can use to signal to recruiters that they are open to new opportunities, without alerting their network or employers – more than 10 million LinkedIn members are currently using the feature, and flying under the boss’s radar.

Open Candidates makes life easier for job-seekers and recruiters alike. For job-seekers, simply turning on your Open Candidates signal makes you twice as likely to receive relevant messages from recruiters, and for recruiters, Open Candidates are twice as likely to respond.

Today, LinkedIn also announces several new improvements to Open Candidates:

• Easier than ever to enable: Your LinkedIn profile you can now let recruiters know you’re open in the Career Interests section within Your Dashboard (only you can see this section)
• Tailored for the opportunities best suited to you: Members can input their preferences –specific job titles, what cities they want to work in, and how soon they’re looking to make a move – so recruiters can identify their dream job.
• Coming soon: Personalized suggestions to help members improve their profile, and unique insights on how much attention they’re getting from recruiters.

To learn more about the Open Candidates, please visit LinkedIn’s blog.

Today, LinkedIn rolls out enhanced smart replies for LinkedIn messaging, a brand new natural language processing recommendation engine to help members save time and respond to messages with greater ease.

Using a machine learning framework developed within LinkedIn, smart replies suggests personalized, contextual messages, enabling members to have a more productive dialogue with their connections.

How does it work? If you message a connection to see if they’d like to get coffee next week, you’ll see suggestions based on the conversation’s context to provide more relevant replies such as “Yes I do” and “What time?” Members are also able to message from any page on LinkedIn, no longer requiring you to leave a profile or company page to start a conversation.

Smart replies are rolling out globally in English first with other languages to come and the messaging is accessible on the LinkedIn mobile app and on desktop.

Members can enable or disable smart replies by going to their settings.

To learn more about the new smart replies, please visit LinkedIn’s blog post and video. For more information on the technical work that goes into generating smart replies, check out this post on the LinkedIn Engineering Blog.

LinkedIn has just announced that it’s now testing video for Sponsored Content with a limited number of advertisers in a closed beta including Prudential Financial and Microsoft Canada, following the launch of native video in the LinkedIn Feed less than two months ago.

Unlike pre- or post-roll video ads, native video ads live directly on a feed as a standalone post. While scrolling on the LinkedIn Feed, our members will see the video ad as they would any other piece of content, albeit with the “Promoted” label

Using video ads, which represent a natural extension of Sponsored Content native ads, advertisers can build brand awareness, engage the people who matter most to their business, and generate qualified demand for their products and services.

With this new capability, advertisers will be able to upload video through LinkedIn Campaign Manager, their Company Page, or their Showcase Page. They can then promote that video content as part of a Sponsored Content campaign and target an audience within LinkedIn’s professional environment.

LinkedIn video ads will feature the same targeting options as other LinkedIn advertising products. Marketers will be able to reach specific audiences based on member profile data like company size, geography, job title, and more. They will also have the ability to target their video ads using LinkedIn’s Matched Audiences suite. For now, video ads will only be served on mobile, but will expand to desktop in the near future.

LinkedIn plans to make video for Sponsored Content available to all marketers in the first half of 2018.

LinkedIn has announced LinkedIn Audience Network, a native advertising network that allows marketers to reach their targeted audiences beyond the LinkedIn platform. By placing Sponsored Content on high-quality, third-party publishers across mobile and desktop, marketers can now reach their professional audience beyond the LinkedIn newsfeed and increase their ROI and marketing footprint.

Advertisers are always striving to get their content in front of the right audiences that will have the biggest impact on their business. With LinkedIn Audience Network, marketers can deliver on their budgets more easily, extend the reach of their campaigns and get their content in front of the right people, beyond the LinkedIn network.

The LinkedIn Audience Network launches after an extensive beta program with more than 6,000 LinkedIn advertisers. On average, participants saw a three to 13 per cent increase in unique impressions served, and up to an 80 per cent increase in unique clicks.

The full blog post with more information can be found here.

According to LinkedIn’s newest report ‘The State of Sales 2017’, which surveyed more than 2,000 Canadian B2B sales professionals and decision-makers, almost half of all sales professionals (45 per cent) surveyed expect their company will increase technology investments in 2017, an increase from 31 per cent in last year’s study. What’s more, for top salespeople that exceed their projected target revenue by more than 25 per cent, this figure jumps to 58 per cent.

What else did the ‘State of Sales 2017’ report uncover about sales pros’ use of new technologies?

• CRM tools like as Salesforce and Microsoft Dynamics are now used by 39 per cent of millennials, compared to 28 per cent of Baby Boomers.
• Younger sales professionals are also championing collaboration apps at a higher rate. Applications like Box, Google Docs, Microsoft Office 365 and Dropbox are more frequently used by millennials with 49 per cent using them, compared to 40 per cent of Generation X, and 22 per cent of Baby Boomers.
• Thirty-four per cent of millennials are using enterprise communication tools such as Salesforce Chatter and Slack. In contrast, only 18 per cent of Baby Boomers are using these tools to talk internally with colleagues.
• Fifty-eight per cent of millennials regularly look up sales professionals on social media, compared to 49 per cent of Generation X and 24 per cent of Baby Boomers.

For more information, you can read the full study here and the blog post here

Methodology:

To examine these trends and take stock of the state of sales technology today, LinkedIn commissioned CensusWide, a global research fieldwork and consultancy company, to conduct this year’s State of Sales 2017 report. Two online surveys were conducted between April 13^th – 28^th. The first was to a sample of 1000 professionals from Canada who primarily work in B2B sales. The second was a sample of 1001 business decision makers from Canada who have influence over purchasing decisions. Both samples were aged over 21 years old and employed at companies of different sizes and functions.