What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social network platform for professionals and business. Now facebook certainly has a place for businesses but I find LinkedIn much more professional. It is a place where people post more professional content than you find on Facebook. You can use LinkedIn to display your skills and experience as well as look for a job.

What LinkedIn is not

I think I was kind of clear previously but LinkedIn is NOT Facebook. This is an ongoing debate online where people are trying to keep LinkedIn professional with only professional posts. By professional posts, I don’t mean everything related to business. But don’t post your home video of your jumping off the roof into your friends on LinkedIn. I am certainly in the group of people who want to keep LinkedIn as a professional place. So please try and keep your posts professional. Imagine that a future or current employer is looking at your LinkedIn profile.

Why should you use LinkedIn

This is a place to show off a little. Don’t be ashamed to show off your work experience and knowledge on your profile. While LinkedIn isn’t a formal resume but is a nice place to put all of your qualifications. The other nice thing is that one your profile you are not bound by the 1 to 2 pages you are with a Resume. So I say go for broke and put everything relevant on your LinkedIn profile page. I would, however, recommend having a 1 to 2 page updated resume handy. You never know when a recruiter may contact you. I have had recruiters not even ask for a formal resume because they were able to see everything they need from my profile.

As I mentioned above this is a great place for recruiters to find you. Make sure you have an updated profile and turn on the option to let recruiters know you are open for opportunities. I get contacted at least once or twice a month from recruiters looking to fill a position. Now some recruiters are really good at finding a candidate to fill a specific position. However, make sure you fully read any job description to make sure you are qualified. Some of these recruiters actually work for the companies they are looking for. I have twice been contacted by a recruiter for a company and both times that led to an interview. The first company offered me the position but I ultimately turned it down. The second I was offered a second interview but I turned that down as well. After the first interview, I discovered there was more travel than I was prepared for.

Great Place for Job Search

Because of its focus on professionals and businesses, LinkedIn is a great place to search for a job. Since they are pretty much synonymous with business it would only make sense for companies to advertise their job openings here. They even have an entire site and mobile app specifically for searching for a job.

Crazy amount of Networking

I really love how LinkedIn calls people “connections” because it really solidifies the idea of making connections. When you work on your profile and become active in the community it is amazing who you can get connected with.

Many of you may know that I created a Kemp VLM load balancer course a while back. My company changed over from using Microsoft NLB, which Microsoft even tells you not to use to Kemp. I was the project leave to implement these new Load Balancers onto our website when we change architecture. So I took all the knowledge that I gained from that project and created an online course. I was working with Kemp on a problem one day and the support technician said my name sounded familiar. He eventually asked me if I had created a course on Kemp VLM Load Balancers. When he was hired by Kemp he found and took my course so he would be more familiar with them before he started. I always thought that was awesome.

After I connected with him on LinkedIn I received a couple of notices of other connections I may know. One was the CTO of Kemp and the other was the CEO. So I sent out a connection request to each of them. After about 24 hours I received a confirmation that they accepted my connection. Then the next day I received a connection request from the CMO of Kemp who said that he saw my course and loved it. The take away here is really that you never know who exactly you may connect with on LinkedIn.

Selfish about my connections

I will happily admit that I am very selfish about my connections. If from a business/career perspective I think you can help me now or down the road I will accept your friend request. On the same note if I think I can help you in any way down the road I will accept your connection request. This really boils down to most people in the same industry and career as me I will typically accept. Unlike Facebook where if I do not know you I will not accept your friend request.

Brag about projects

Everyone has a project or two that they are super proud of. LinkedIn is a great place to brag about those projects. This helps to show recruiters the types of projects you have worked on and what you have been successful at. I don’t list every project of course but I do list projects that are high visibility to the company. I also list ones where I saved the company money and caused little to no downtime.

One of my favorite projects that I am super proud about was upgrading our VoIP phone system. This was a major upgrade from 32bit OS to 64bit OS. This means a complete rebuild of the operating system. We also replaced the hardware at the time as well and upgraded the clients to the new version. While this was not done in a 24/7 contact center I did only have a Window of about 6 hours to perform this upgrade. Because of all the prior planning and staging, I was able to successfully upgrade the VoIP system with little to no downtime for our Contact Center.

Let people leave recommendations

Recommendations are where people can write nice words about you on your LinkedIn profile. This looks great to recruiters because it validates and gives social proof to everything you put in your profile. Don’t be afraid to ask former co-workers and bosses or even current co-workers to write a recommendation for you on your profile. Of course, do not have someone lie for you on your profile. I am sure there are plenty of people out there that have nice things to say about you. Ask them to say it on your LinkedIn Profile.