Tag: LinkedIn

I am getting sucked into that thing called LinkedIn that I blogged about the other day. Yes, it is THAT good. If I were to measure the “goodness” of it, it’ll be just a bit under Flickr and just a bit above YouTube.

I was surprised to find out that not all features are available, or, should I say, so obvious on the first day of usage. The best of them, the real cream, comes on the second, third, and later days.

On the first day I’ve just created myself an account and filled in my profile with all the places I worked at and studied at. I also found some familiar people, got connected to them, and browsed through their contacts. That about it.

On the second day, when I logged in, I was presented with a whole bunch of news. First of all, there were news about my contacts. Some of those people updated their profiles, some quit jobs, some found new jobs, some added more contacts. I saw it all in a nice and clean way, with links for further information.

Then, further down the page, I was shown some statistics about my network. I was told how many people joined my network, how it expanded, etc, etc. And I had a link to even more statistics, which I will talk about in a minute.

Then, I had something totally unbelievable – three vacancies that met my specifications. All three in Europe, which I mentioned I was willing to relocate. And all three of these vacancies came from my own network of connections. That is not the complete “out of the blue”, but via people who I know via people who know… How cool is that?

Another sweet thing that I saw was information about new people entering LinkedIn, who studied in the same places that I studied at. It just said so in the most plain and simple way possible – “There is 1 new person from Intercollege”. And it was a link to that person’s profile. Wow. Really, really, nice.

Remember that statistics link I just mentioned above? Well, of course, I couldn’t pass it by. Click. Now I got even more stats, but, again, they were all nicely organized and presented in the most useful way. These new statistics told me everything about my network – locations, industries, growth and expansion, etc. I was also provided with links to profiles of people from my industry, nearby industries, remote industries, fast growing locations, random locations, new people from my own location, and so and so forth.

I think I’ve spent half of the day wondering around, learning about all the features and looking through all the people… Now it was time for more action.

I’ve sent invitations to many people, explaining to each of them what LinkedIn is and why they should join. Almost all of them did, by the way. Some of them just created a profile to “get rid of me”. Others proceeded to add their own contacts. My network is growing fast, as you can see from the image above.

With all these new contacts I started noticing that there are several ways I can reach new people, that I am connected to them via several of my contacts, and that some of my contacts know each other without even me knowing it. Even though, they live and work in different countries. Amazing!

With all that activity, introductions started to fly around. Introductions are this great feature of LinkedIn, which allows one person to ask another to forward an introduction to the third one. That is, if person A knows person B, who knows person C, person A can ask Person B to forward a letter to person C, so that they can get connected. It sounds a bit confusing, but it is extremely logical and very easily done at LinkedIn.

And so on, and so on, and so on…

It seems that features are endless at LinkedIn, and somehow they are all packed into this very intuitive and cool looking interface, which is a breeze to use. I’m almost speechless. I’m divng deeper and deeper into LinkedIn… C’mon you guys, dive with me!

In this age of blooming Web 2.0 applications and social networks it is easy to miss Yet Another Start-Up &trade (aka YASU, let my Greek-speaking friends forgive my harmless pan). Some people managed to walk by Flickr and not notice it. Others, are still using browser bookmarks, instead of Delicious (or Furl, or …). It happens.

For me, such a miss was with LinkedIn (Thanks to Alexey Yudichev for fixing this) . LinkedIn is a social network of professionals. The professions don’t matter – anything from accounting to IT works just fine. When you join LinkedIn, you have a few things to do straight away.

First of all, you should built your own profile. That’s pretty much like writing a resume, but much easier. You just click through to add your education, experience, awards and certifications, interests, etc. There is no need to do everything at once. You can always edit and update it later.

Secondly, you should add some contacts. Contacts are other people that you know. They might already be using LinkedIn (you can easily find out), or they might not, in which case, you’ll need to invite them (via a handy form, that can do batches at once).

Thirdly, you should promote yourself and your contacts. LinkedIn has this extremely easy way of adding and requesting recommendations.

Doing all those things, you build a network. You are at the center of your network. Then you have people that you know directly. Then you have people that people who you know directly know directly. People get connected. And that is all possible without using a Nokia phone, if you know what I mean.

Here is a little image that shows how fast and how large can your network grow.

It says, that I’ve only added five contacts. Those the people that I know directly. (Of course, I know more people directly, but these five happen to be either using LinkedIn or joined upon my invitation.) Those five people have added some people that they know – happenned to be 27 people. And those other people have added people that they know. Overall, the number of people that are networked to me in this way is more than 2,300.

Now, getting a closer look at those other people, it is easy to notice that I have suddenly became linked to people in different industries, of different professions, in different parts of the world…

So what?

Well, LinkedIn, in this manner, brings together people who know how to do their job (professionals), and those, who are looking for people who know how to do their job (employers).

By the way, if you an employer, or looking for professionals for some other reason, there are a whole bunch of tools available for you, ranging from a simple search, through advanced search by titles, locations, etc, to job listings.

This post is getting too long, so let me just end here. Or almost here. I’ll just provide you with the link to my LinkedIn profile, and an urge to go to LinkedIn website and really check it out. Register, create yourself a simple profile, and add some people to your contacts. You’ll see how useful and virally interesting that stuff (or should I say staff?) is. Really.