Forget the Apple Watch, the biggest story of the week is the acquisition by LinkedIn of training website Lynda.com for $1.5 billion in cash and stock. It’s the bargain of the century, or rather it will be seen as such if the business network does what I think it will and solve a top headache for businesses: how to retain staff.
The jobs market in the tech sector is defined by ‘unicorn jobs’ where companies are looking for candidates with skills from fields that have yet to mature or in areas that move so fast that what you learned in college could be borderline obsolete by the time you enter the workforce. A classic example would be the fields of design and search engine optimisation where fashion, new coding languages and constant algorithm revision demand in-service training. The argument of ‘we don’t pay much but you’ll learn a lot’ will attract candidates but without up-skilling many will leave as soon as they master the learning curve.
So what do employers do? Most of the workforce in Ireland is employed by SMEs who do not have the means to pay for tuition and throwing degrees at problems won’t necessarily solve them, anyway. Sometimes skills gaps can be filled incrementally instead of from first principles. The marketer with a four-year-old Masters degree might only need a primer in SEO instead of a deep dive; a developer might like to update their knowledge of design although a career in UX isn’t what they’re looking for; a designer might like a proper briefing on the latest Adobe products. Lynda has made a business addressing just these kinds of problems through short online courses taken at the candidate’s pace a subscription model that breaks down at less than €20 a month. It’s a cost-effective solution for employers who can’t afford tuition support and candidates who need it to stay engaged with their work.
Two-factor
Fine, the Lynda model is great for employers and candidates and everyone shoulid be using it, but why would a social network like LinkedIn be interested in buying it? Well this comes down to two elements: standardisation and integration.
On standards: Have you ever fudged a skill on your CV? How about making a reasoned decision that ‘x’ skill is transferrable to ‘y’ with a little research? How about being highly experienced in software ‘x’ but only having a passing familiarity with its latest iteration? These may incremental changes suitable for the Lynda treatment. So you have no excuse not to keep your skills current and the learning curve may be more gradual than thought, with access to the right resources. Excellent, hole plugged.
This brings us to the second point: integration. After completing your course maybe you get a little ‘verified by Lynda’ tag to prove you’ve taken the course and you can add it to your list of top skills and endorsements on your LinkedIn profile – ideally this would happen automatically on completion of your course. Even better, because the course is vetted by LinkedIn it has an additional level of authority recognised at an international level.
Of course, LinkedIn might adopt a hands-off approach to Lynda in the same way Facebook has handled WhatsApp and Instagram but without integration it would seem like a pointless acquisition. Having gained competence as a business network and recruitment platform, adding a training wing is a smart idea.
Is the future of training a mix of casual courses and profiles like Dungeons & Dragons character sheets?
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