Sunday, February 06, 2011
7 Tips for Using Your LinkedIn Profile to Land Great Projects
FreelanceFolder: "LinkedIn may not have the name recognition of Facebook or the popularity of Twitter, but what it does have is the reputation as one of the most effective social networking services for freelancers. Boasting more than 80 million users and counting, LinkedIn has something for everyone, from writers to designers, from podcaster to vbloggers.
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5 comments:
I just joined LinkedIn about a week or two ago, so it's interesting to hear these tips for starting up connections. Some of these, like choosing a personal URL and completely filling out your profile are common sense (the first thing I did when I started editing my account was find an application to post a PDF of my resume to the account), but others are things I would never have thought of, like linking videos and articles. Not sure why, maybe it felt too Facebook for a professional networking site. The primary takeaway is to be active on the site - don't build a profile and let it stagnate as a reference, keep it active and alive to show engagement and enthusiasm.
I always found Linkedin to be an iffy concept. With Twitter, Facebook, personal websites, and Linkedin, its hard to decided where your social and work lives should be separate. You may be able to add connections and apps you cant to a personal website, but does that put you in a better position to land the job you need? These are great tips to fully take use of Linkedin, especially taking time to be active and completely fill out your profile, but I feel like there is too much social networking in Linkedin. Landing jobs can be about connections, but how is Linkedin better than monster.com? Making connections in person more than a website is something I feel more important, and might be a better tip than to expand online.
The use of social networking sites is excessive and in many ways has devoured our culture and our abilities to socialize beyond a keyboard. it is dangerous to have this type of system without it being used in excess. on the brighter side it is a unique way to get work and it is interesting to see how it pans out. there are positives to this especially as a way to connect with people in your field across the country and across the globe. this type of networking does also have its downsides as it can cause you to lose your ability to actually get a job face to face. this type of technology is is still unstable and needs more test runs to make it more dependable
I think this is some fantastic advice, I think linkedin is well underestimated by college students in our industry and very few of us have a profile on there and it is a worthwhile investment to start building a profile now. It may or may not help you down the road but if it gets you a job it is worth the 2 hours it takes to create and prepare in the way this article recommends, I've had a linkedin for a year or so but just recently have I started adding connections and building my profile. Hopefully this could be of use somewhere down the road, even if it isn't it is a good way to centralize a lot of my work and information.
LinkedIn has the potential to be a very useful networking tool, but the way this article is written it seems to imply that a well-put-together LinkedIn profile will probably get you a job and make you successful and rich and happy, etc. While the advice WAS mostly useful (i.e. FINISH your profile--use it to its full advantage, etc), a person can't bet the barn on anyone important looking at or reading their profile. And just like facebook and other social networking sites, you really need to filter out the information that you put on there. As cool as something may sound, it has the potential to be a real turn-off to a possible future employer. Luckily there are no web albums (yet) on LinkedIn that have the potential to be damaging.
I've had LinkedIn since last fall but only recently started being active on it, because it's a good "professional" way to keep your contacts close in a non-facebooky way.
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