I love sifting through my LinkedIn account. There's so much rich data in the system, and so much to learn, that a casual glance at a profile leads me to hours of contacts and websites.
It helps that I'm a social media headhunter, but it's not just the search. For every business I work with, LinkedIn remains my go-to application. There's always something I can do to show off to a prospect that they hadn't thought of, or can't do with their own accounts.
If this sounds a bit like a love song, it's because I've had a lot of occasion to be on LinkedIn in the last week, and even though the changes are frustrating to some recruiters, there really isn't anything like it out there. A business database that is updated by the contacts. It allows you to contact them. The expectations are that you are supposed to do business with others on the site. And most important, all that is needed is the curiosity to explore.
How do you use it?
1) Identify companies to sell your products, hire you, or hire from.
2) Learn market terminology from titles to jargon.
3) Understand career paths from those who have gone before you, to better understand what led to their current titles.
4) Find out what technologies partners and competitors are using, and how long they've been using them.
5) Find out what alumni of your school are doing, or find out what alumni of the school you want to attend are doing.
6) Find out if that MBA or Law Degree is worth it, by looking at profiles of recent graduates.
7) Use LinkedIn as a springboard to research a company and its microsites.
8) Find out when people leave jobs or start new ones, and where a company hires most, both geographically and from what companies.
9) Research a company to see if they're really engaged in social media, or if they are just posting a profile because others told them to.
10) Find out who is looking at your profile, and reach out to them to see if they're looking to hire.
All of these are free services that can be used with just a little creativity and a healthy dose of curiousity. All of these are actually enjoyable for researchers. And if you dig long enough, no matter what you are looking for, you always find something that will be useful to you, from a remembered name to a lost contact to a company you should have known was there, but was not.
And don't forget serendipity. Two weeks ago, I was giving an Advanced LinkedIn Webinar. A friend of mine from college was asked to view it with the HR manager. Imagine his surprise when he sees my name and hears my voice! We just had a great dinner with his family, reconnecting after what must have been 7 years.
There's some good science behind why this occurs. What matters to you is that you get curious about these social networks, and do some of your old exploring. It may take patience, but do you think finding gold was easy? You know it's there. You just have to find it. That's how LinkedIn is today. I can't swear to it five years from now, but it's been a major contributor to my success, more than Facebook, more than Twitter. Heck, more than blogs, if you want to tie a dollar figure to it.
Get curious. Get a pan. Head down to the LinkedIn River and figure out what you're missing.
