LinkedIn has over half a billion registered accounts worldwide and isn’t showing any signs of slowing down. But with millennials about to become the largest cohort of workers in the world are they taking advantage of the social platform that’s made for professionals?
According to Pew Research, over 90% of Americans aged 18-29 use social media. To discover some of the best and brightest the world has to offer you must meet them on their social platforms. LinkedIn built itself on becoming the main place for people to discover careers and network professionally. However, according to LinkedIn, around 38% of its users are millennials. That’s over 250 million people looking to connect with other professionals. While that seems like a large number, the number of accounts on other social platforms like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram dwarfs LinkedIn by the millions. With a large number of older users, there is the feeling that LinkedIn is the stuffy, vanilla platform of the corporate world. It lacks some of the panache of Twitter and Instagram, and it lacks the gargantuan ads reach of Facebook.
LinkedIn also is a place where the currently successful collaborate. According to Sprout Social, almost half of the users on the platform earn more than $75k a year. With the average millennial salary hovering around $35k, it’s clear that this cohort is looking to use LinkedIn as a launching pad for upward mobility. It’s also a platform that is truly international in scope. Over 70% of its total users reside outside of the US. So if you are a company looking to hire millennials in Europe or Asia, LinkedIn is a much more saturated network on those continents.
So it seems that millennials are indeed taking advantage of LinkedIn but perhaps not with the speed in which they adopted Facebook or Instagram. Millennials that are using LinkedIn are clearly career-minded but haven’t made the move to more fruitful jobs. With LinkedIn doing more every year to help with discoverability and engagement, it should evolve into a more social space where people are trading information on current events just as much as exchanging resumes. This is what LinkedIn will need to continue to do if they want to be in place to capture Gen Z in the next few years when they enter the workforce. More video, more gifs, and more interactivity with thought leaders that younger users feel empowered to engage with.
