<p>Walking into the Empire State Building makes everything feel more significant. In the lobby of one of New York City’s most iconic buildings, our group of NYU Master’s in Publishing students gathered to visit the offices of the world’s most recognized networking tool: LinkedIn. I thought I knew what LinkedIn was, a place to upload your résumé, look for job opportunities, connect with recruiters, and occasionally scroll past someone's humble brag about a promotion but after touring the office and meeting with the team, I realized LinkedIn is so much more.</p> <p>We took the marble elevators up to the LinkedIn offices where we were greeted by Jessi Hempel, Senior Editor-at-Large at LinkedIn, who introduced us to a whole different side of the business: their content development team, a team designed to contribute to the news ecosystem turning the LinkedIn platform into a place where millions of people get their most important business news every single day.</p> <p>LinkedIn isn't just where professionals network. It's where they find out what's happening in the world, filtered through the point of view of people who were in the room when it happened. To manage all of that content, their editorial team works around a framework called the Four Cs: Circulate, Cultivate, Curate, and Create. It sounds simple, but it represents a whole operation dedicated to making sure the right information reaches the right people within an algorithm that was not built to promote virality, but to encourage honest and consistent content creation.</p> <p>LinkedIn editors do rely on artificial intelligence for many of the tasks involved in curating content, but they believe humans have a critical role to play in making the editorial and journalistic decisions around that content. AI can select the right information and the right voices at the right time, but it is still humans who make all of the judgment calls, who select the top voices on the platform, and who create relationships with creators who join the platform to help them grow their reach. Artificial intelligence alone isn’t the path forward for their work.</p> <p>Finally, it wouldn’t be a LinkedIn visit if we didn’t get some career advice from those who know the networking space best. The team talked about curiosity and resilience as traits that will carry us a long way in any job search, not just talent and hard skills, but the willingness to keep asking questions and bouncing back when things don't go as planned. They also encouraged us to be ourselves and emphasized how this is a real differentiator. In a market that can feel very hard to navigate at times, they reminded us that &quot;there are always opportunities for talented people.&quot; I came in thinking LinkedIn was a networking tool. I left thinking of it more as a media company that makes very intentional choices about trust, humanity, and what it means to build a career out loud.<br> &nbsp;</p> <p><i>Viviana Rodrigo is a first-year student in the <a href="/content/sps-nyu/explore/degrees-and-programs/ms-in-publishing.html" target="_blank">MS in Publishing</a> program at NYU. Originally from Venezuela, she is interested in editorial and production, as well as the role books play in everyday life. She enjoys reading across genres, running, and creating content inspired by her love of books.</i></p>