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One thing that really interests me as I watch the development of the Internet is the constant shifts it can create in the balance of power. For instance, as just one example, music fans who had to listen to the radio to discover new bands can now find a band’s music (and website) directly without radio or record label intermediaries. Those kinds of changes have a ripple effect that I find fascinating.

Those of us who hire employees may see similar power shifts coming soon. Jeremiah Owyang has an interesting post on LinkedIn’s new company pages, which LinkedIn bills as “a new research tool that helps you find and explore companies that you might want to work for or do business with.” Based on the data LinkedIn has on a company’s employees, the company profile page shows all kinds of things a job seeker might want to see—the schools attended most often by current employees, the median age of employees, names of new hires, average employee tenure, and more.

As Jeremiah points out, LinkedIn’s sample is limited to employees that participate in LinkedIn; and for smaller organizations (like most associations) there’s a lot less data for LinkedIn to work with. But it’s a shift in the balance of power for job seekers who want to find information on your association that isn’t filtered through the hiring manager or the HR department. (I wonder if someday companies will actively encourage their best employees to join LinkedIn or a similar platform to make sure that those employees’ experiences are reflected in their organizational profile?)

Of course, power can shift both ways. For example, Michele Martin recently posted some interesting musings on whether resumes are losing their power to get your foot in the door with a particular organization. (Of course, there’s an argument that resumes were never that effective a job-hunting tool, but that’s a different post.) And the Global Neighborhoods blog links to a company that’s experimenting with hiring a new employee entirely through social media—skipping the traditional hiring process entirely. For certain kinds of jobs, your hireability could be increasingly determined by the quality of your work that’s available online.