I just discovered the awesomeness that is LinkedIn, which is basically Facebook for professionals, for the purpose of networking - which means that you're allowed to care about it and spend time on it. Cool, right?
Your profile on LinkedIn is basically your resume, and it's really user-friendly to format. Instead of posting on people's walls, you can write each other recommendations. And it's much more secure, because they really encourage that you only add people you know, and they ask for your password whenever you make any major actions. There are even groups (although they're all closed groups that you have to be approved to join) and applications that you can add, although I haven't looked into them yet. But one of my favourite features is seeing people's connections (aka friends list) because it's really useful for networking, although there are people who make it private so you can't see.
Plus there are job listings, and my brother told me that he's gotten job offers from people on LinkedIn before. As a matter of fact, there were more people than I'd thought I knew on LinkedIn, including my Aunt Karin, who has no time for anything, so I'm assuming this must be useful in some way. And I found my long, lost Uncle Kevin on it. You see, one night, when I was taking a break from writing my essay, I decided to search all the working people I could think of. I found someone with my uncle's name in his general area, but I didn't know if it was him because it was at a different company. So I went into that firm's website, which thankfully had a database of profiles for all of their lawyers, and when I searched for him, there he was! Super cool.
So! I highly recommend every to get on LinkedIn, because it's a really useful career tool. And if you know me, please add me! Just search for my "real name."
Cheers!
2 comments:
I have a linkedin account but I haven't found it to be useful just yet. I wonder if people in the magazine industry use it?
They do! Actually, the friend who got me started on LinkedIn is in the industry. I'm more involved in PR, but I did a search for some editors I can think of off the top of my head (like Ceri Marsh of Fashion, Ann Shoket of Seventeen, and even the tech-phobic Bonnie Fuller of American Media) and most of them were there. Of course, many of the accounts are probably managed by assistants, but they're important people, too. So definitely keep on it and keep adding people as you meet them!
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