Exactly how does Linkedin work?

In My Humble Opinion (IMHO)
#1

I have a Linkedin profile, but I’ve heard people say it’s very helpful in a job search and I can’t figure out how.

Is there an active way to use it? Do you just search the connections of your connections for people who work where you’d like an interview? And if you find them do you just send a note saying hey-we both know so and so, can you help me get a job?

Or maybe it’s more passive and you just hope someone searches for exactly the skills you have listed on your profile?

I assume I could be getting more out of it, but at first glance it just seems like a more grown up version of Facebook.

#2

Some people will post job ads on LinkedIn so if you are connected to them, you will see those ads. Mostly, though, I’ve found it useful in a passive way by keeping my resume on LinkedIn up-to-date and listing my skills, so friends-of-friends looking for people with my skill sets can find me. Then they can ask my friends if I am as awesome as I say, and my friends will say, “no, he is even awesomer.” And then I get a job. :slight_smile:

#3
  1. It has a job search function like Monster
  2. Recruiters use it extensively to find people
  3. You can follow companies of interest and learn about them
  4. You can utilize the network of people you know to get introductions to people who can help your career

You can be passive on it and just use it as a good place to post your resume or you can be assertive and get introdutions to people you wouldn’t normally have access to.

#4

It can be very useful if you have a decent sized network and know certain tricks.

Here’s a good one someone showed me when I was looking for a job a few months ago:

Let’s say you are interested in working for a particular company, say Apple, but don’t know anybody there. If you’re logged into your account you can do a search by company – Apple – and it will show you everybody in your network who has a connection at Apple. (That is, everybody in your network who has someone in their network at Apple.) So it can give you a lead for who to talk to get an “in” at the company.

#5

Sort of. But no one is going to “help you get a job”. People hire other people in order to solve a particular business problem. The way you can leverage this with LinkedIn is to find people in a hiring position who you think you can help and then contact them. Like if you do marketing, you search your network for Director of Marketing.