LinkedIn to Go On a Hiring Spree

The online professional network, LinkedIn Corp. (NYSE:LNKD) has reported its earnings for the third quarter earlier yesterday and announced its plans to sell about $100 million more in stocks to fund its expansion plans.

The company is planning to make use of the money procured from the sale of stocks as working capital and invest on the expansion of its product development and field sales. LinkedIn Corp. is also planning to make use of these funds for strategic investments and acquisitions along with capital expenditures.

Linked Corp.’s third quarter earnings, reported yesterday had preformed more than the analysts’ expectations. The company’s revenue was up by about 126 percent at $139.5 million as compared to previous year’s $61.8 million during the same period. LinkedIn’s revenue as well as earnings was higher than the expected loss of 4 cents per share and $128 million respectively. LinkedIn reported a loss of 2 cents per share for the third quarter.

LinkedIn has also made plans to go on a hiring spree to increase its workforce by 500 or 600 heads in the fourth quarter as compared to the previous quarter’s numbers of around 250 to 300. These plans were made public by the chief executive officer of LinkedIn Corp., Jeff Weiner while talking to the analysts over a conference call on Thursday, said the sources.

LinkedIn is going on a hiring spree in the last quarter in order to keep up with its plans to get a jump on early in 2012. LinkedIn is looking for more engineers to dish out new products and scale the technology to facilitate faster release cycles for its products.  According to the chief executive officer, the company can manage the sudden increased hiring as it has already built a strong and stable foundation for the company which enables it to manage hyper growth. He also said that the company is going to hire those candidates who can be productive from the first day itself.

The number of users accessing Linkedin over their mobiles has increased by over 400 percent and it continues to grow. Mobile page views accounts to around 10 percent of the total page views and a part of the company’s growth is being driven by the launch of new mobile apps for iOS and Android operating systems. The Chief Financial Oficer, Steve Sordello said that the company is looking for various options to monetize the mobile products and services.

Post Written By: Ed Liston Ed Liston is a senior contributing editor at TheStockMarketWatch.com. An active market watcher and investor, Ed guides an independent team of experienced analysts and writes for multiple stock trader publications. He is widely quoted in various financial publications on the Internet. When Ed is not writing about stocks, investing in stocks, talking about stocks, or otherwise doing something stock related, he likes to go sailing and fishing in his yacht.