At the end of the year we tend to look back in the past. I’ve found an old presentation in my archives about online social networking and LinkedIn in my archives. This presentation was given to the European Recruitment Team of Bearingpoint in September 2004. An interesting look back in the early days of online social networking.
You have to know that BearingPoint had his own Exective Search Recruitment team back then and were continuously looking for better ways to find talent. In the summer of 2004, the VP of Recruiting at Bearingpoint send out a message to all recruiters globally with a tip to look into LinkedIn. Because I started using LinkedIn for my recruiting efforts in February 2004 (9 months after launch of LinkedIn.com) I had some real hands-on experience. So I replied to his email and shared my first positive results with him and his Executive Search team, as I strongly believed that this LinkedIn platform was going to be very important in the (near) future for recruiting. As a result, he asked me to show the European Recruitment Team how LinkedIn works. Have a look at my online social networking presentation from 2004 below. It’s a bit short but that’s because I wanted to show online what the most important LinkedIn features were.
Some interesting facts and statements from LinkedIn.com in September 2004:
- Launched May 2003
- Over 1 million users worldwide
- Focus on business customers, executives and celebrities
- Strengthens and extends your existing network of trusted contacts
- Search within your network and contacts without referrals (sales, recruiting etc)
Number of European LinkedIn users in September 2004:
- 55.000 in UK
- 23.000 in France
- 21.000 in Netherlands
- 13.000 in Germany
- 8.300 in Sweden