What LinkedIn's Acquisition Of Lynda Means For Talent Management

You may have already heard that LinkedIn recently bought Lynda for $1.5 billion. For those of your not familiar with Lynda, it is a platform that provides online courses similar to Coursera and Udemy. You can access thousands of courses on all sorts of different topics and pretty much learn any skill that you want. Not too long ago, I did a podcast interview with the chief human resources officer at LinkedIn, Pat Wadors (who is also speaking at our Future of Work Forum on April 29 in San Francisco). We had a long conversation about the future of HR so it's very interesting to see this latest development. There are some really great posts that have been written about this, such as this one by Josh Bersin, but I wanted to share my insights. I think this is a huge move — a “genius” move for Linkedin.

In this episode of the Future in Five I talk about this acquisition means for the future of talent management. I explore the skills gap and how Linkedin + Lynda can be used to close this gap. LinkedIn knows everything about us from a professional standpoint including the jobs we have, the jobs we might have in the future and the skills required for both! LinkedIn can now recommend courses based on career paths we are going to take.

Would you find it valuable if LinkedIn offered you courses that helped you become a better candidate for a  job you were applying to? I think the next 12 to 18 months are going to be very interesting to watch. Tune in and let me know what you think in the comments below!

Jacob Morgan is a keynote speaker, author (most recently of The Future of Work), and futurist. You can get the first 30 pages of his book for free as well as weekly content on the future of work by subscribing to his newsletter.