How do you use LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a very popular professional networking site that a lot of business professionals use for a variety of reasons. We are curious to hear from our members, how do you use LinkedIn? What value does it bring to your business? Is there anything that you dont' like about it?

My use of LinkedIn is very limited. I used to use it quite a bit, but I got tired of it. It isn't really geared for smaller businesses or consulting work, but that is just my opinion.

I think LI is best used for recruiters and job hunters. It is like a powered up online resume with additional profile info. For recruiters and headhunters, LI is like a goldmine for them. They have access to a ton and I mean a ton of information on professionals everywhere and it is easily searchable. Perfect for seearching on skillsets and job descriptions to find candidates for jobs, even if that person isn't even looking for a job. (This has happened to me before) They can also leverage the extensive networking component and look for candidates through the people in their network.

For a job hunter - it offers all of the same benefits as a recruiter, just reversed. If you fill out your LI profile to the max and optimize it for keywords just like you would for your website - I guarantee in no time you will have recruiters contacting you for positions they think are a fit for you.

Other than that, I think the last main benefit is using it to make connections for biz dev partnerships. You can find contacts across organizations and leap frog your way into getting introduced and start discussions for potential partnerships. They do have the whole 'Ansers' section which is somewhat useful, but not very intuitive for researching.

Overall, I think the site is pretty useful, but just for specific purposes. I cannot see myself returning to it consistently, but only when I am in need of beefing up my resume and looking for new work.

Oh and did I mention I think the whole 'write a recommendation' thing is abused to the point that it is pretty much useless. I don't really pay too much attention to someone who has 40 recommendations...its like recommendation spam.

I have an account on LinkedIn but so far have not used it.  A lot of my former co-workers used it very frequently to find new jobs.  It must be a good use of the site since all of them have found new jobs from LinkedIn.

I am with Jen, I have an account but I don't use it.  I have never really taken the time to build out a good profile and find contacts.

Julia points out something that has always bothered me about the site, the "write a recommendation" feature.  I have wondered about the legitimacy of recommendations when anyone and everyone can write one for you.  I like the referral to it as "recommendation spam".  Two words couldn't describe it more perfectly.

I agree - the overuse of the recommendation feature has completely diluted the value of them on LinkedIn. To me it is analogous to reciprical linking and how that has devalued over time. (Reciprical linking is/was a standard method for people to get backlinks to their website)

Genuine recommendations are great, but the over solicitation or the 'you write one for me and I will write one for you' behavior offers little value, imho.

 I have to partially disagree, ladies,

First - all my recommendations are good and I worked hard for them - please don't diss them [:'(]

Next - I find LinkedIn to be really useful. I use it to keep in touch with past friends and clients.  BUT - I do not like the draconian attitude LinkedIn has towards members.

Now if "someone" (mysolutionspot?) could provide the usefulness of keeping in touch (such as LinkedIn) without the draconian attitude they have towards members.........

I rest my case.....

Sian,

To clarify - I don't think all of the recommendations on LI are 'spammy', I agree with you 100% that there are some genuine, hard erned recommendations out there. You can generally single those out and I appreciate them as they are using that feature as intended as well as providing the person with added credibility. So please understand, I am not knocking anyone's earned recommendations.

My problem is those people who have a bunch of recommendations from people they barely worked with and the whole premise is, I will write one for you if you write one for me. The whole idea of getting more recommendations for the sake of getting more and puffing up your profile. I see that time and time again and it just turns me off.

As for the site itself, I do think it is useful, but for me - only for specific purposes. I use other sites like Facebook to keep in touch with my friends as that has much more of a social vibe. Linkedin for me is only - look for work or let work find me (mainly in a professional setting). For others, I am sure they use it in other ways, and for someone like you who I assume from your previous posts is a consultant - I could see LI as being very valuable for getting new work. I just don't see it being dominated with entrepreneurs or business owners - it is mainly a professional/corporate hangout, imho.

Sian - can you explain your last statement a little bit. We would be interested to hear what we could do to improve.

Thanks for the question - and in fact you have just embodied why I like MySolutionSpot over LinkedIn.

I have been a member of LinkedIn since a couple of months after they launched ( I can't remember how long ago that was in Internet time - several years ago in real time, at least!). But they have never once replied to a question or comment I made about their site. The mere fact that you guys read and ask questions of members puts you well ahead of them, IMHO.

Things I consider to be draconian about LinkedIn are the policy to prevent you from adding new connections if three people say they don't know you. Now, I don't want a ton of spam from MLM people, but over the many years I have been on LinkedIn, I have re-married etc so some people didn't recognize me. LinkedIn has a three strikes and you're suspended policy - regardless of how many people you have invited or have invited you. So out of my 500+ real connections on LI (yes I'm old and been around the block, but like to keep in touch with people) three people I inivted (some years ago) said they didn't know me, and BINGO, LI blocked me from inviting. Unless I send an email to theiir CS who never reply.

So I would hope that you guys can create some kind of algorithm that figures out the percentage of rejected invitations, and only penalizes those that abuse the system.

Also - put more info out about the fact that small business owners can connect to each other better than LinkedIn - contextual help. FAQs etc. I don't think people know that they can do anything other than chat in the forums.

Hope this helps!