Linking Your Way to the Future with LinkedIn

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Social networking is the in thing nowadays but unfortunately, not all people really understand what it is really all about. But once you get the hang of it, you’ll find out that there’s a lot to it that what meets the eye.

Take for example LinkedIn, one of the top social media networks with annual revenue of $75-100 million. Created by Reid Hoffman in 2003, it is a business-oriented social networking site mainly used for professional networking. It enables its users to share information, resources, and experiences.

Professionals can increase their work productivity by using their LinkedIn network effectively. This can be done by looking for new business opportunities, recruiting employees, etc. According to most of the 35 million registered user’s worldwide “most people use LinkedIn to “”get to someone”” in order to make a sale, form a partnership, or get a job. It works well for this because it is an online network of more than 8.5 million experienced professionals from around the world representing 130 industries. However, it is a tool that is under-utilized”. This is maybe due to the fact that most people look at a website with a specific purpose in mind like Facebook is for keeping in touch with friends; YouTube is for viewing videos, and so on. So in order to cater to a diverse group of people with different needs, LinkedIn incorporated a number of features in their site:

A contact network
- Consists of user’s contacts, the contacts of theory contacts and so on.
- By increasing our contacts, the chances that your profile will be viewed numerous times will also increase.
Site can be used to get jobs, individuals, and business prospects.
- Usually these are recommended by a contact.
- You can use another feature the Advanced Search, to look for individuals who have the same job as you do.
Companies can use LinkedIn to headhunt for prospective employees.
- LinkedIn is designed to be used by HR departments to locate talented employees.
Reference check companies.
- An interviewee can check up on prospective employers’ qualifications and also the respective company’s using the reference check tool.
- On the same note, using the Current Companies Only tool, you can check and ask former employees for their candid opinions.
LinkedIn Answers
- Allows you to ask questions to your own business network as well as to the entire LinkedIn community.
LinkedIn News
- A user can read news about a variety of business topics culled from over 10,000 publishers and business-related blogs.

One of the main issues with LinkedIn is the amount of spam messages one gets. Also it has been criticized for limiting the number if contacts and groups and limits the number of invites that can be given.

LinkedIn can be very helpful in maintaining professional contacts and keeping in touch with like-minded users with similar interests. Many users have had prospective employers call them and a lot were able to get jobs thru this social media network.

Who knows, maybe you’ll get called up next.

External Links:

Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn

How LinkedIn Works

Wikipedia

Related Articles:

LinkedIn Launches New Work Productivity Features

What is Social Networking?

How to Get Started With Social Networking

Key words- Chefs, Social Media

Image Credit: petedanks

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