Admit it. You’ve thought about how “So and so is better than me at [fill in the blank] or I’m awesome at [fill in the blank].”
Now you can do this on a professional level as LinkedIn has introduced a neat web-based app called How Do You Match Up? It’s a visual snapshot of information and resources on how you compare to peers in your field. It is sponsored content from Samsung, but it’s pretty cool.
The tool compares your work experience and LinkedIn connections. It lists articles your peers read and the people they follow. Refer to the image to see what a comparison looks like. As you can see, it compares me to other marketing leaders showing that my experience lines up. It’s nice to see that my profile has more recommendations than the average marketing leader.
I heard about a quirk to keep in mind – a colleague reports that her match up says she only has a certificate while a fellow leader has a bachelor’s degree. She has a bachelor’s degree, but she obtained a certificate after receiving the degree. That’s why it doesn’t show up.
Although the diversity of my network dwarfs in comparison to others, it doesn’t surprise me. I’ve worked in a few similar industries for most of my career. Besides, 35 industries is nothing to sneeze at. Who can name 100 industries? Or 30?
The selection of articles and groups proves disappointing. It’s generic enough that it could apply to all industries and fields with stories like:
“How Successful People Stay Calm.”
“The Three-Word Problem That Can Destroy Your Life.”
“What Predicts Success? It’s Not Your IQ.”
How do the Groups fare? For marketing, I get Harvard Business Review, Job Seeker Premium and Digital Marketing.
I bet you’ve worked in multiple fields. You can change this in one click. However, there are only minor differences in the list of Groups. Only the last group changes when I switch from marketing to IT. The list of most followed LinkedIn influencers doesn’t change.
If I change the fields enough times, one or two names change. Some of the influencers I see are Richard Branson, LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner, Jack Welch, Ariana Huffington and Deepak Chopra.
The last part of the page contains a couple of articles on work-life balance, a poll and asks you to share a tip on how you manage work-life balance. You can subscribe to receive biweekly updates.
Although it won’t reveal anything earthshaking, LinkedIn’s how you match up tool takes only a few minutes of your time. You might pick up a little insight about your experience and get ideas of where you stand among your peers.
How do you match up?