You Learn Something New Every Day

The value of being LinkedIn

These days, online connections are getting more important every year. For example, when you go out on a date with somebody, the friends and parents are more likely to Google you and see what they can find out about you. Who do you know? What’s your history?

It goes beyond dates, though. Whether you are looking for a job, a place to live, a partner or partners for a project of some sort, or even a good place to stay during a business trip or vacation, it helps to know people.

Enter

This isn’t MySpace, or even Facebook. LinkedIn is much more for professional networking than social interaction—however, getting on LinkedIn has some nice benefits.

Say you were looking for a job, or maybe you want some advice, or to meet with somebody who knows a certain industry or area well. LinkedIn is a great place to start.

I will say that at times LinkedIn doesn’t feel quite as vibrant as some of the more youth-oriented social networks. There isn’t a great deal of buzz, and you don’t see a stream of comments on peoples’ profiles. But anyone who is serious about real networking knows that this is a good thing. You don’t have to sign into your LinkedIn profile every day to check who messaged you. If somebody wants to connect with you, you simply get an email through the secure system (in other words, the person never gets your real email and you can block them easily and effectively at any time).

When you sign up, you are walked through the steps needed to create your profile. This is just like your résumé, and the nice part is that it is formatted the way people like to see it, so you don’t have to worry about the design much. People who view your profile immediately see a summary of your qualifications with an option to view more details.

LinkedIn takes full advantage of the networking aspect of business searches; you are more likely to trust people that know somebody you know. If a friend of yours is connected to somebody, that person will notice that you are a “second-level connection” when you contact them or vice versa. This is good both when you are looking for somebody and when they are looking for you. Plus, if a connection of your changes their email address, once they change it on LinkedIn, you can simply use LinkedIn to send an email to them and it will go to the new address—so you don’t lose touch.

The job search tools here are very accurate. You can search by keyword and location, or use the advanced search to find only entry-level jobs, or only jobs posted in the last 7 days. It’s your call.

There’s even blogs devoted to getting the most out of LinkedIn—LinkedIntelligence, Extreme LinkedIn, and the LinkedIn Business Discussion Index. At these sites you’ll be sure to find new ways to leverage the Internet to get in touch with new and exciting people.

I haven’t yet taken full advantage of LinkedIn yet, but I’ll be sure to write about it as I get deeper into it. In the meantime, you can check out my LinkedIn profile or go to www.linkedin.com to get an account and start networking, if you haven’t already.

June 22nd, 2007 Posted by Michaell at 09:16am | Networking | one comment

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