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Nobody seems to have told LinkedIn that we're in a recession, at least according to the kind of perks they're offering to woo new hires who need no actual programming experience, just a "quantitative background." Does fantasy league baseball count? It must be hard to find new talent for the social networking company with even Google's chef leaving for Facebook. Maybe they should put up listings on the Yahoo campus. Full text of the job description and perks after the jump.

Be challenged at LinkedIn

We're looking for superb analytical minds of all levels to expand our small team that will build some of the most innovative products at LinkedIn.

No specific technical skills are required (we'll help you learn SQL, Python, and R). You should be extremely intelligent, have a quantitative background, and be able to learn quickly and work independently. This is the perfect job for someone who's really smart, driven, and extremely skilled at creatively solving problems. You'll learn statistics, data mining, programming, and product design, but you've gotta start with what we can't teach—intellectual sharpness and creativity.

This is a unique opportunity to help define and build a new product and engineering team within a mid-sized (230 employees), globally-recognized, energetic, ambitious, and profitable pre-IPO startup.
Projects

LinkedIn has amassed an incredible dataset, which we use to deliver highly personalized experiences for all our users. Our group also leverages our unique dataset, our creativity, and our skill with quantitative analysis to design and and build products like "people you may know", "who's viewed my profile", "jobs for you", and "company profiles". The environment here is optimized for speed—for example, within a week of the initial concept for "viewers of this profile also viewed", it was live on the site. There are many products along these lines that you can help improve, develop and invent. The work is both intellectually rewarding and delivers important value to our users. In addition, the work's varied: one week, you may be involved in predicting which ads a specific user is likely to click on (profile targeted advertising), and the next, working on a model that decides whether 'Webex, Inc' is the same as 'Webex Communications' (it isn't).
Why work at LinkedIn?

* Challenging work that matters
* LinkedIn is actually useful. Every day, people use LinkedIn to hire, find contacts, stay in touch, and manage their professional brand.
* Weekly releases mean your code will help someone find their dream job or former colleague right away
* "We tackle world-class engineering problems (of scale, performance, and security) with innovative architectural solutions" — Ruslan Belkin, Director of Engineering.

Rapidly growing business

* 21 million interconnected, elite professionals (that's more people than live in Australia)
* >1 million new users every month (that's like Fiji or Rhode Island)
* Profitable in 2007 ($75M-$100M expected in 2008)

Benefits

* Pre-IPO stock options
* 18 vacation days per year plus 8 company holidays
* Free catered lunches every day and a fully stocked kitchen
* Shuttles from San Francisco and CalTrain
* Onsite Gym
* Beautiful Mac workstations with 23" monitors
* Great colleagues to play Guitar Hero, Rock Band, and Four Square with.