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LinkedIn head on top CEO ranking: It's about walking the walk

Weiner talks to the "CBS This Morning" co-hosts about how more people can connect with jobs - and jobs they'll love
LinkedIn CEO on making the right career connection 04:11

LinkedIn CEO Jeff Weiner tops a new list of chief executives in a survey. He was given a 100 percent approval rating based on feedback from his employees.

Asked about the distinction and his secret to being liked by his employees, Weiner said, "You really have to ask the employees, but I think it starts with investing heavily in our culture and values and not just talking about it but walking the walk."

LinkedIn, the social media website geared toward professional networking, is now 277 million members strong around the globe, according to Weiner.

The connection to jobs, Weiner said, starts with users' LinkedIn profile.

"(It) is an opportunity for people to put their professional brand out there, their experiences, their skills, perhaps most importantly, their ambitions," he said. "And, once that happens, you have recruiters and hiring managers coming onto LinkedIn and conducting searches. ... They're able to find the exact right person for the right job, and then, conversely, we're also able to take jobs and, through our technology, get the right job in front of the right member at the right time."

LinkedIn can function as a way to find a job and to network when you already have one, but, according to Weiner, network referrals are still one of the primary ways people are finding work. He added, "It also helps once you're building your network to be able to get your foot in the door in those companies you want to work for because you're able to leverage first-degree connections, second-degree connections, third-degree connections."

The search for work is ongoing for many in the U.S. as another 5,000 Americans filed for unemployment last week, and 10 million are out of work across the country, according to the Labor Department. For more than a third, that's been the case for more than six months.

Weiner said the unemployment rate of 6.7 percent is just "part of the picture."

"In addition to the unemployed, you also have people who are in temporary work and are seeking full-time employment, and you have folks that are called marginally attached to the workforce - they have essentially dropped out by virtue of looking for so long they didn't find anything," he said. "(In total), that's 20 million people who are looking for more work, and yet we have four million available jobs in this country, and one of the reasons for that is a widening skills gap."

Though Weiner said there's a "substitution effect at times" with advances in technology, he said "the rate of innovation is at times outpacing our ability to educate the workforce."

"We're still educating people today for the jobs that once were and not the jobs that are," Weiner said.

For more with Weiner, including talk about Facebook, Twitter and the acquisition of WhatsApp, watch his full "CBS This Morning" appearance above.

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