LinkedIn unveils Learning feature

SAN FRANCISCO — LinkedIn has long been the social network of choice for people looking for a job. Now the strait-laced cousin of Facebook also wants to be the social network for people looking to keep the jobs they have.

On Thursday, the San Francisco firm announced LinkedIn Learning, a feature that offers training courses to teach business, technology and other skills via the LinkedIn website.

“The useful shelf life of skills has shrunk to less than five years,” said Tanya Staples, a former grade school teacher who is now LinkedIn’s senior director of content and production. “As a teacher, I could see we were no longer able to teach all the skills people needed in school to set them up for long-term successful careers.”

Cue LinkedIn Learning, a service similar to other online learning portals such as Skillshare and Coursera. The courses are provided by Lynda.com, an online education company that has a library of thousands of videos, which LinkedIn acquired last year.

The courses available fall into three categories: business (marketing, management, leadership), creative (video, graphic design, photography) and technology (coding, Web design, data science).

None of the courses offer accreditation, but Greg Bayer, a LinkedIn engineer who worked on the learning platform, said the courses are a good way for people to brush up on their skills or learn new ones.

LinkedIn Learning is built on top of the LinkedIn social network, so it is able to recommend courses to people based on their profession, the skills of their peers and the company they work for, Bayer said.