How to Join LinkedIn with an Invitation

By Joel Elad from LinkedIn For Dummies, 2nd Edition

One way to join LinkedIn is with an Invitation. When a friend or colleague invites you to join, you receive an e-mail invitation. The e-mail clearly identifies the sender and usually has “Invitation to connect on LinkedIn” as its subject line.

When you open the message, you see an invitation to join LinkedIn. There might be some extra text if the person inviting you personalized the message. You’ll also see a button or link that takes you back to LinkedIn to create your account.

When you’re ready to join LinkedIn with an invitation, just follow these steps:

Enlarge 1 Click the button or link from your invitation e-mail. You should see a new window open that goes to the LinkedIn Web site and asks to verify your name and e-mail address, as well as enter a password for your new LinkedIn account,. If you want to be known on LinkedIn by another version of your name (say a nickname, maiden name, or proper name), or if you want to use a different e-mail address from the one used for your invitation, you can change the details now in those fields — First Name, Last Name, Email.	Enlarge 2 Enter your correct first name and last name, and create a new password for your account. Then click the Join Name’s Network button. You’ll be taken to the Create a LinkedIn Profile Like (the name of your inviter) where LinkedIn collects some basic information it will use when it creates your account.	Enlarge 3 Complete the fields presented on the Create a LinkedIn Profile page to tell LinkedIn your current employment status, company name, job title, industry, country, and ZIP code. In the first drop-down box, you can choose between these five options to identify your current employment status. In the next box, enter the name of the Company where you are currently employed, and then your Job Title in the third field provided. Depending on your employment status, LinkedIn may reload the page with a new field, Industry, whose drop-down list you can then use to identify which industry you feel you belong to. Confirm your country of residence by selecting your country from the drop-down list provided, and then enter your ZIP or postal code in the box provided.
Enlarge 4 Click Continue and choose your e-mail system. LinkedIn offers to import your contacts from your e-mail program. If you see your e-mail system among the choices, select the radio button next to that system and then click the Login button. LinkedIn will walk you through the steps of importing your address book, offering you the chance to connect to existing members of LinkedIn. At this point, you can also just click the Skip This Step link and then come back and take care of this after you create your account. It might be tempting to start inviting friends and colleagues to connect with you right away, but you might want to work on your profile or think of a strategy first before flooding people’s e-mail inboxes with Invitations. You can always invite people to connect with you at any time.	Enlarge 5 Decide who you want to connect with using your new LinkedIn account. After you import your e-mail contacts or skip that step, you get to the final step of the invitation process, where LinkedIn confirms your connection to the person who invited you, and asks you whether you want to invite anybody else, by entering their e-mail addresses into the Connections box.	Enlarge 6 Click either the Send Connections button or the Skip This Step link. At this point, LinkedIn has created your account and will take you to your home page. In the meantime, if you want to take a break to check your e-mail, you’ll find a nice Welcome to LinkedIn! message there from LinkedIn Updates, assuring you that you’re now a registered LinkedIn user.