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"This post originally appeared on the American Express OPEN Forum, where Mashable regularly contributes articles about leveraging social media and technology in small business.\nLinkedIn, through its networking, question and answer, and application features (which I recently wrote about on OPEN) is already a powerful tool for maintaining and establishing relationships in the business world.  But it can also be an enormously valuable way to attract top talent to your company, especially if you use all of the options available to you.   \nWhile posting a job to LinkedIn is similar to any other job website \u2013 adding details about the position, skills, and requirements \u2013 where the site separates itself is with company profiles, allowing you to provide potential candidates with a lot more information about your company and the people that work there.  Here\u2019s how they work and how to set one up:\n1. To get started, go to the \u201CCompanies\u201D menu on LinkedIn.  From there, select \u201CAdd Company\u201D.\n\n\n\n\n2. Enter basic information about your company, like its description, number of employees, and industry it operates in.\n3. Follow LinkedIn\u2019s wizard for creating your company profile \u2013 you\u2019ll be able to add a logo, locations, and a feed for your company blog. \nOnce you\u2019ve completed LinkedIn\u2019s steps for getting setup, your company profile will be available.  Now is where it gets interesting though.  In addition to showing off the basic information you provided, LinkedIn will pull in data about your company from around the site.\nSo, for example, all of your job listings will automatically show up on your profile, along with links to the profiles of all current employees, former employees, new hires, and recent promotions.  LinkedIn also does analysis of your company and the connections that your employees have on the network.  For example, it will automatically calculate your company\u2019s median age, top schools, and other companies that they are well-connected to. \nAs you can imagine, all of this aggregate data about your company gives potential candidates (as well as anyone else interested in your company) a lot of information to dive into and help determine if it might be a good fit for them.  And for you, once it\u2019s setup, it all happens automatically as you and your employees use LinkedIn, though you can always make edits to your company\u2019s basic profile information. \n\nLinkedIn recently also added a premium product \u2013 Custom Company Profiles \u2013 that lets you add more features, like videos about your company and positions, interactive polls, and several customization options for recruiting.  These are worth considering for larger companies (they come at a price), but for small businesses, a basic LinkedIn company profile should be enough to add lots of efficiency to the recruiting process \u2013 both for candidates and for you.  \nMore business resources from Mashable:\n- 5 Easy Social Media Wins for Your Small Business- 5 Business Models for Social Media Startups- Social Media for Business: The Dos &amp; Don'ts of Sharing- 30+ Apps for Doing Business on Facebook\nImage courtesy of iStockphoto, Yuri_arcurs"^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://mashable.com/2009/08/03/linkedin-company-profile/>