Scot Herrick asks is LinkedIn useful? What do you get out LinkedIn? What would it take to make it more useful?
I get only a little of value. When helping a friend conduct a job search recently it was helpful in
figuring out who to introduce him to. Finally its just plain fun to see
who you’re friends are connected to. One of my friends has over 600
contacts – confirming what I’ve always known – he’s a great connector.
I also get some traffic from having my blog as my home page on Linked-in. In theory it will also help keep track of people who change their email addresses.
Next time I do my own job search I’m sure that most of the value will come from taking a few good friends out for lunch. In that case Linked will just be a good reminder of who to talk to.
As I’ve said before (Online Code Reviews suck – even Guido van Rossum can’t fix that) nothing beats face to face communications.
How do you use LinkedIn?
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You get out of LinkedIn what you put into it. Sure, it’s a way to keep track of contacts (assuming that everyone keeps their profiles up to date), but it can be so much more than that…so much more.
Thanks to its service, I was able to get in touch with the CEO of the company I now work for all because I found an ad for a position I was interested in and found someone in my network who new someone who worked there.
What I also like about it is that you can contact people you normally wouldn’t have the opportunity to meet in the physical world. Who likes cold calling? No one, but with LinkedIn you’re now capable of getting from point A to point C and you’re more likely to get to point C because all the points in your network are more inclined to be receptive to such requests.
Definitely use it when you do your next job search. I know I will! :)
LinkedIn’s new Q&A feature is extremely useful, acting both as a promotional tool and as a referrals service. I’ve learned more from it than I do from the referrals service at my local business breakfast club, and it’s a darned sight cheaper…
I will be jobless in a couple of months so have turned my mind to thinking about finding a job. How does Linkedin compare with having a profile on a blog, wiki, YouTube etc with job hunting?
Like you, I am skeptical. But now I am faced with having to find a job, I need all the help I can get. So I’m going to have a closer look at LinkedIn and see how far I get with it. thanks, Sarah
Sarah some thoughts.
For me the value of these things is all in proportion to how much notice they generate.
My interest obviously is in coaching Agile/Lean Software development.
In my case the most important activities have been:
1) Mailing lists
2) Blog
3) Writing for InfoQ
4) Conferences
….
n) Social Networking tools.
So they can be useful but other things are more important.