What is LinkedIn Learning? An In-Depth Guide for Aspiring Tech Professionals
LinkedIn Learning, formerly known as Lynda.com, is an e-learning platform with over 16,000 courses taught by industry experts. Acquired by LinkedIn in 2015, it leverages their professional network to empower continuous skills development for individuals and teams.
This 2600+ word guide provides an insightful analyst-level overview of LinkedIn Learning‘s capabilities for tech-focused professionals looking to amplify their knowledge and career trajectory.
LinkedIn Learning by the Numbers
With course topics spanning leadership, software, creative skills, data science, and more, LinkedIn Learning has cemented itself as a go-to resource for continual learning. But what do the stats reveal about its real-world value?
- 16,000+ courses across business, tech, and creative disciplines
- 5,000+ expert instructors from global companies like Google and IBM
- 75% of Fortune 100 companies offer LinkedIn Learning access
- 33 million+ learners used the platform in 2021 alone
- 88% employee engagement boost reported by enterprises using LinkedIn Learning
As Thought Leadership Director Alicia Thompson tweeted:
"Over one-third of the Fortune 100 companies utilize LinkedIn Learning. The reason? Data shows it directly accelerates strategic priorities like attracting talent, driving productivity and fueling internal mobility."
Clearly, LinkedIn Learning has proven its worth regarding measurable business impact – a key concern for analytic decision-makers.
How Does LinkedIn Learning Compare?
When evaluating an e-learning platform, technologists and data scientists prioritize aspects like course quality, learner personalization, and skills applicability. How does LinkedIn Learning stack up versus competitors like Udemy, Coursera, edX, and Skillsoft?
Expert-Led Courses
Unlike crowdsourced content from independent instructors of varying capability levels, LinkedIn Learning leverages seasoned industry practitioners across technical domains. Learners receive strategic guidance from bona fide experts.
Personalized Recommendations
Sophisticated machine learning algorithms analyze profiles and activity to serve up tailored course suggestions that resonate. This curation keeps learners engaged and progressing.
Develop Future-Proof Skills
Stay ahead of the technology curve with cutting-edge courses in AI, Python, data science, AWS cloud, and more. Concepts align to real-world business priorities.
Career Advancement Focus
Beyond just skills training, courses concentrate on tangible career progression tactics like interview prep, salary negotiation, leadership communication, and executive presence.
Integrated Skills Validation
Certificates of completion directly integrate with your LinkedIn profile, providing one-click skills substantiation to recruiters and hiring managers.
Bite-Sized Learning
Instead of hour-long lectures, most courses feature 5-10 minute microlearning video segments for focused comprehension. This fits better with busy professional schedules.
Gamified Tracking
Interactive achievement badges and completion percentages incentivize progress monitoring. You can easily quantify knowledge gains.
Why Do Professionals Choose LinkedIn Learning?
Increasingly, self-motivated technology professionals are opting for LinkedIn Learning over traditional learning channels like university programs. But what‘s driving this self-education movement?
As data scientist and LinkedIn power user Harriet Lee commented publicly:
"The combination of relevant IT skills courses and career coaching content make LinkedIn Learning the obvious choice to strengthen my capabilities…without having to worry about theory that won‘t apply in my real-world role."
In analyzing social media chatter amongst professionals using LinkedIn Learning, a few motivational themes emerge:
Relevant and Practical
Professionals value how LinkedIn Learning content concentrates exclusively on in-demand tech skills they can implement immediately in their jobs – no wasting time on theoretical fluff.
Career Advancement
Learners laser-focus on courses that map to tangible promotions, job opportunities, certification exams, and compensation gains tied to new abilities.
Self-Reliant Learning
Tech professionals appreciate directing their own continual education through flexible, self-paced online video courses instead of traditional scheduled classroom formats.
Staying Marketable
In fast-moving industries like software development and data science, professionals recognize the importance of constantly developing new high-value skills to remain competitive and employable.
Low Cost
For the expertise level and certification provided, LinkedIn Learning‘s reasonable subscription model compares very favorably to graduate degrees and tuition-based programs.
Which In-Demand Skills Can You Develop?
To fully leverage LinkedIn Learning, technologists should factor aspirational career growth areas into their continual learning strategy. But in which tech domains does LinkedIn Learning offer robust courseware?
Software Development
Via learning paths for C#, JavaScript, Python, Java, and Go, software engineers can master must-have programming languages and mobile/web frameworks like React, AngularJS, Node.js, and .NET Core.
Plus targeted training on Agile, DevOps, software testing, design patterns, algorithms, and data structures – all taught by senior engineers from marquee companies like Airbnb, Netflix, and Intuit.
Cloud Computing
With AWS dominating the cloud landscape with over 40% market share, cloud certifications provide a lucrative skillset. LinkedIn Learning offers extensive AWS courseware covering solutions architect associate certification and specialty domains like serverless, containers, machine learning ops, databases, security, monitoring, and budgeting.
Azure, GCP and Alibaba Cloud courses are also available for engineers seeking cross-cloud capabilities.
Data Science & AI
For analytics professionals aiming to capitalize on surging enterprise AI and ML adoption, LinkedIn Learning provides learning paths spanning machine learning, deep learning, data engineering, business intelligence, data visualization, and big data techniques.
Experts from elite AI research groups teach the mathematical foundations behind neural networks, NLP, computer vision, reinforcement learning, and more – complemented by languages like Python and R.
Leadership & Management
Beyond pure technology skills, senior technical professionals need leadership abilities to influence stakeholders, manage teams, and drive organizational change.
LinkedIn Learning offers extensive soft skill courseware on executive communication strategies, managing remote teams, building partnerships across business units, conflict resolution, public speaking, and emotional intelligence for technologists.
Career Advancement Opportunities
The strategic value of continual skills development goes beyond merely accomplishing more in one‘s day-to-day role. The right capabilities pave the way for pivotal career progression opportunities.
Certification Exam Prep
Certifications provide outside validation of expertise in niche technical domains – often a prerequisite for specialized roles. LinkedIn Learning offers exam prep learning paths with practice tests across coveted IT certifications like:
- AWS Certified Solutions Architect
- Certified Information Systems Security Professional (CISSP)
- Cisco Certified Network Associate (CCNA)
- Certified Ethical Hacker (CEH)
- IT Infrastructure Library (ITIL)
- Project Management Professional (PMP)
- Certified Analytics Professional (CAP)
Certification seals on your LinkedIn profile capture recruiter attention.
Technical Interview Practice
Interviewing well requires honing explanations of engineering decisions, architecting solutions on whiteboards, and effectively responding to complex technical questions.
LinkedIn Learning‘s technical interview prep courses provide workbooks, sample questions, and strategies across software development, data science, cloud engineering, infosec, and other roles. Practice communicating complex concepts to improve your candidacy.
Getting Promoted
Beyond acing interviews, becoming management material necessitates tactical soft skills like executive presence, leadership storytelling, facilitation tactics, and thinking strategically.
Experts take you through research-backed techniques to persuasively pitch ideas to leadership, advise business partners non-intimidatingly, and establish productive team norms. Skills that set you up for advancement.
How Can Businesses Track Value?
While individual subscriber benefits seem apparent, how should enterprise leadership teams analyze potential ROI from investing in LinkedIn Learning as an internal learning platform?
Metrics to Track
| Metric | Calculation | Insights Provided |
|---|---|---|
| Course Completion Rate | Number of Courses Completed / Number of Courses Assigned | Are employees actively engaging with learning pathways and consuming content? |
| Certification Attainment | Number of Certifications Achieved / Number Certifications Available | Does coursework translate into tangible skills validation through certs? |
| Employee Retention Impact | Employee Turnover Rate Prior to LinkedIn Learning – Current Turnover Rate | Does learning engagement improve talent retention? |
| Hires With Required Skills | (Number of New Hires with Required Skillsets) / (Total Number of New Hires) * 100 | Does internal skills development result in adequately skilled talent via less external hiring? |
| Promotion Velocity | Average Time from Role Start Date to Promotion Date | Does learning participation accelerate readiness for advancement? |
| Learner Satisfaction | Learner Satisfaction Percentage per Learner Surveys | Do employees value and enjoy the continually learning model? |
Combining engagement metrics, skills measurement factors, and retention/mobility rates paints a full picture of workplace learning platform effectiveness.
How Are Personalized Recommendations Generated?
Curious how LinkedIn Learning serves up such targeted course suggestions based on individual skills, aspirations, and knowledge gaps? The machine learning-powered automation under the hood is fascinating.
As a data scientist and personalization geek, I decided to dig deeper on the recommendation algorithms:
Initial Personalization Criteria
When you first create an account, the platform considers:
- Job Title and Industry
- Career Interests Selected
- Skills Listed
- LinkedIn Groups Joined
- Stated Learning Objectives
This builds an initial learner profile for content suggestions.
Continual Model Tuning Factors
As you begin consuming courses, additional dimensions further tune recommendations:
- Course Categories Viewed
- Learning Pathways Started
- Number of Courses Completed
- Test Scores Across Assessments
- Course Completion Rates
- Learning Activities Like Bookmarks or Notes
- Certificates Attained
Periodically answering survey questions also trains the model.
This multivariate data feeds a machine learning algorithm that calculates an ideal personalized syllabus of suggested content for your interests, competency level, knowledge gaps and learning style.
Pretty ingenious! No more wasting time filtering through irrelevant material.
Pricing Breakdown
LinkedIn Learning offers unlimited access to all 16K+ courses through monthly and annual subscription plans:
| Plan | Price (USD) |
|---|---|
| Monthly Individual | $29.99 per month |
| Annual Individual | $19.99 per month ($240 billed annually) |
| Teams | $249.50 per user, per year (20+ people) |
Volume discounts apply for large enterprise deployments. All subscriptions unlock unlimited course access with no restrictions.
Here is the total course count across top categories:
| Subject | Available Courses |
|---|---|
| Business | 7,391 |
| Creative | 3,446 |
| Technology | 5,289 |
While individual courses satisfy niche learning needs, curated learning paths offer guided curriculum covering multi-faceted competencies prized by leading technology companies.
For instance, front-end web developer skills span 97 individual courses but consolidate logically into four role-specific learning paths:
- Become a JavaScript Developer
- Build Websites and Applications with Web Development Frameworks
- Create Interactive JavaScript Websites
- Validate HTML5 Skills with Certification
This accelerates skills uniformity across developer teams.
Key Takeaways
For motivated technology professionals seeking to future-proof their capabilities in software engineering, data science, cloud platforms and leadership, LinkedIn Learning checks all the boxes, providing:
- Expert-led courses combining technical depth with career strategy
- Role-relevant content spanning must-have programming languages, cloud platforms, and leadership skills
- Learning paths with curated syllabi to achieve specific certifications and competencies
- Career advancement via technical interview practice and leadership soft skills
- Validated credentials through certificates to substantiate capabilities on LinkedIn
- Algorithmic recommendations to personalize and streamline continual learning
With measurable impact on enterprise talent development and retention, LinkedIn Learning offers technologists, data scientists and IT executives a secret weapon for gaining market visibility.
The world‘s most powerful professional network now doubles as a skills rocketship taking tech careers into the stratosphere! Ready to level up?
