LinkedIn is a familiar tool to create a professional presence online, connect with colleagues and clients, and search for jobs or hire talent. It also offers excellent resources to help you stay updated with in-demand skills.
But did you know that LinkedIn is also one of my favorite tools for college searches? Below is a guide to use LinkedIn to find out about about majors, graduate outcomes, and where people with your dream job went to school. LinkedIn's data is based on real information, making it a valuable resource for informing your decisions on what to study and where to apply.
There are essentially two paths to follow when using LinkedIn to research universities: searching company insights, and searching university insights.
Searching Company Insights
Search for a company by name on LinkedIn, go to its profile page, and click on the "People" tab. This tab offers a numerical breakdown of employees at that company, including where they live, where they went to university, their job roles, skills, and majors. For example, as of writing this post, a high-level LinkedIn search revealed that most U.S.-based employees of The Walt Disney Company lived in Florida and California. The universities with the greatest number of alumni were the University of Central Florida and Cal State Fullerton. The top skills were customer service and Microsoft Office, and the most common major was Business Administration and Management.
Disney is a big company and the data above are very general. However, you can refine your search further by clicking on specific data points. For instance, selecting a particular job area from the "What they do" list will give you deeper insights into that field. If you click on "Arts and Design," the information will be narrowed down to just employees in that area. In this group, the number one skill is Adobe Photoshop, and the most common major area of study is Animation, Interactive Technology, Video Graphics, and Special Effects. Clicking on this major narrows the search even further, revealing that most employees are alumni of the Academy of Art University, CalArts, the Vancouver Film School, and the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).
So, if you're considering a career in animation, research the companies that hire animators, understand the career paths of those roles. Consider universities where current employees studied, even if you've never heard of them. And, find ways to develop the in-demand skills for that career path.
Search University Insights
Another way to use LinkedIn for your college search is to research universities directly. Let's take Arizona State University (ASU) as an example.
In the search box, type "Arizona State University." Click through to the university's profile page and then click on the "Alumni" tab. LinkedIn provides insights into where ASU alumni work, where they live, what they do, their skills, and what they studied. You can view the entire set of alumni or narrow the search by time range—for example, the last ten years might provide more relevant insights than looking at outcomes from alumni dating back to ASU's founding in 1885.
Narrowing the search to 2014-2024, you'll find that many alumni work in operations, education, engineering, and healthcare fields, including positions at the university itself. The most popular major during the last ten years was Business Administration and Management.
LinkedIn reveals that between 2014 and 2024, there were 601 ASU alumni at Apple, 559 at Microsoft, 500 at AWS, and a whopping 1,484 at Intel. Narrowing the search to ASU alumni at these four companies, you can see that most studied majors in electrical engineering, computer science, or computer engineering, with top skills in Microsoft Office, C, Python, C++, Java, and MATLAB. Soft skills like leadership, communication, and teamwork were also highly ranked.
Your Findings May Surprise You
I found at Apple there are more computer science graduates from San Jose State than from Cornell. Georgia State has sent more communications graduates to Warner Bros. Discovery than USC. And, there are more than twice as many U.S.-based LVMH employees who studied marketing at FIT than at NYU.
LinkedIn data is limited to information provided by its users. However, on a whole the LinkedIn data set isn't influenced by the interests that sway college rankings. Conducting company and university searches can reveal insights that help students and families understand the real outcomes of their investment in an undergraduate degree, and identify programs that align with their expectations.
Have you searched for a company or university on LinkedIn? What information surprised you? Tell me in the comments.
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