Home > Science and Technology > LinkedIn.com makes professional networking easy, enjoyable

LinkedIn.com makes professional networking easy, enjoyable

Matt Hewitt,
Grand Central Magazine

LinkedIn is like MySpace and Facebook, only instead of adding friends to your network, you add co-workers and former employers. Another attraction, writes Matt Hewitt, is the site's profiles are uncluttered and straightforward. Photograph by stock photo
(Click here for more images.)

I remember a time when Facebook was this magical place where social networking took place. You’d added friends, kept tabs on their personal lives and knew what their hobbies were

Well LinkedIn is very similar to old school Facebook, but with a twist. Unlike Facebook, LinkedIn is for the professional world. Rather than adding tons of friends and acquaintances, you add co-workers, bosses and professional references.

There are no silly applications. There is no place to put your favorite bands or movies or upload pictures of your latest party. LinkedIn features a simple, elegant and straightforward profile with contact information, a job history and a place to list skills and awards. Consider it your online resume. Rather than a place to for people to get to know you as a person, it’s a place for people to get to know you as a worker.

This is your dad’s networking application. It’s not about social networking as much as professional networking. The people you connect with on LinkedIn are people that may be able to help you get a job one day. If you’re looking for a friend to point you in the direction of the next sweet party on campus, this is not the website to do it.

The old adage of ‘it’s not what you know, but who you know’ seems to be what LinkedIn is all about.

I like LinkedIn, It has a clean interface that Facebook lost long ago and has only limited advertising. Not to mention absolutely no applications.

One of my favorite features is the ability to recommend someone. The recommendations section is reserved for telling people how awesome your previous boss or co-worker was. Once you make a recommendation, it is displayed on that person’s profile so that people can read them and gain a better understanding of how they fit in at their previous job.

Another feature I enjoy is a profile completeness status bar. As you enter information into your profile, it fills up, and in a quick glance you can tell how “complete” your professional profile is. This helps ensure that you have a detailed profile to give potential employers a larger peek into your professional history.

LinkedIn also features the ability to download people’s contact information as a .vcf file, which allows you to import them into your address book no matter which e-mail service you use. This can be helpful if you’re trying to create a rolodex of important connections in your life for people interested in “traditional” professional networking.

LinkedIn has partnered with a few job searching sites, so for those looking for work, it can be an asset into finding that entry-level job or getting to the next step in your professional life.

The one flaw in LinkedIn is that although it has been around longer than Facebook, it is nowhere near as popular. Most people haven’t yet jumped on the bandwagon, so it may be difficult to find connections. As of mid-April, there are just over 3,000 LinkedIn users who have attended Central Michigan University. But I suspect that number will increase as more of the Facebook generation graduates college and joins the professional world.