It's all about who you know. Or it's about who the people you know, know.

LinkedIn is a professional networking website. Unlike social networking websites like Facebook or MySpace, LinkedIn is geared primarily towards forming professional business connections. No games, no chat, no quizzes, no photo galleries. I joined LinkedIn in 2006 but I barely touched it until late 2007 when I finally started utilizing it more.

How It Works:
You connect to people you already know personally - either co-workers, former co-workers, former classmates, or good friends. Since you already know your own contacts, there's not much benefit to LinkedIn yet. The beauty of LinkedIn is that it reveals professional connections that you didn't even know you had - people your contacts know but you didn't.

At this moment I'm just shy of 80 "1st-degree" LinkedIn connections - people I already know personally. But because my 80 connections are connected to many other people, that actually connects me to over 5,000 2nd-degree connections. Great! That's 5,000 professional contacts that my personal connections can put me in contact with. LinkedIn goes as far as 3rd-degree connections too, connecting me to over 350,000 new people I didn't know I had a connection to. I didn't think these 3rd degree connections (a friend of a friend of a friend) could be very helpful to me, but that's why I'm writing this post...

How It (May Have) Helped Me:
First a quick story: Last year, somebody I did not previously know saw my professional credentials on LinkedIn because we had a mutual contact in common. Unsolicited, she contacted me and asked me to apply for a job with her company. How sweet is that when jobs come looking for you.

Now the main story: Last month I applied for a job I was interested in. After applying, I used LinkedIn to search for people on LinkedIn who may work for that employer. Luckily I found the actual manager for that department I was applying to. He was a 3rd-degree connection (a friend of a friend of a friend). I asked one of my connections, a college alumnus, to pass along a brief introduction message to the manager stating that I was interested in the position. He then passed it along with a recommendation to his contact (whom I didn't know at all), who then passed it along to the manager. Yes that's a long chain but the point is that it did work, and I start my new job this week! Since I actually applied for the job before using LinkedIn you could argue that it probably didn't actually help me get the job, but a personal recommendation through a contact certainly didn't hurt.

Final Thoughts
Even though I'm starting a new job this week, it's always good to maintain connections with past colleagues and friends. If you know me, connect to me on LinkedIn.



P.S. As much as I recommend LinkedIn to anybody interested in professional networking, I can't see any good reason to pay for the premium service.

Labels: internet