Abandon Nest

I’m not much of a social networker, but when I saw LinkedIn I knew it was going to be a useful tool.

If you’re not familiar with LinkedIn, here’s the basic gist. It’s a networking site designed for professionals in business. It can be used to connect with people in order to find jobs, services, and other opportunities.  You can choose to become “linked” to colleagues, bosses, and friends. Ideally, this will expand your virtual network a few steps and allow you to become aware of opportunities through other people. You’ll also be able to gain valuable contacts.

After creating your account, you’re greeted with summary screens that prompt you to enter information about yourself. You’ll probably want to include items such as your current job, your professional background, and any clubs, groups, or organizations that you belong to. In addition, you can highlight certain interests of you that are searchable by others.

Adding information is quite simple. The visual look of the site is quite intuitive. You know exactly where to click in order to alter your information. You’ll also find it easy to change things at a later date. Edit links abound.

The hardest part is figuring out what you should say. As a professional oriented site, this is not the place for “i m da 1337357 h@x0r” or anything like that. You want to look and sound cultured and educated as people will view your information when considering you for a position or as a service provider.

After you’ve put together your profile, you’ll probably want to browse the site a little bit just to get a feel for the place. I recommend clicking on Jobs & Hiring and checking out the positions that are available around you. It seems like a lot of people put positions up on LinkedIn, and you’d have a good chance of finding a new job quite easily. Also, if you’re hiring LinkedIn makes it extremely easy to post a job. Just look for the big orange button.

As with most networking sites, you can invite your friends, co-workers, and colleagues to join you. This is easy and LinkedIn provides some great default emails that you can send. I sent out a few and am waiting to hear back about whether they joined or not. I’m looking to expand my network because you can really never have too many connections.

In the end, I have to give LinkedIn two big thumbs up. I like the interface, I like the service, and I think it serves its target audience well. If you’re looking to make contacts, LinkedIn could be a definite sign up. For now, you can check out my profile here.