LinkedIn: Benefits of Using

By Joel Elad from LinkedIn For Dummies, 2nd Edition

With LinkedIn, you can build your brand and profile to share with others, search for work, get valuable information about searching for work, and expand your network. All of these things are aimed at putting you in touch with people who can help you advance your career and network smarter.

Building your LinkedIn brand and profile

Companies spend billions to ensure you have a certain opinion of their products, and that perception is their brand image. You have your own brand image in your professional life, and it’s up to you to own, define, and push your brand. LinkedIn allows you to define a profile and build your own brand based on your professional and educational background.

Your LinkedIn profile can become your jumping-off point where any visitor can get a rich and detailed idea of all the skills, experiences, and interests that you bring to the table. Unlike a resume, where you have to worry about page length and formatting, LinkedIn gives you a place to present additional information:

Lists of groups you belong to
Memberships or affiliations you have
Honors and awards you have received
Professional interests.
Presentations for others to view
Website links to other parts of your professional identity

Looking for jobs on LinkedIn

LinkedIn makes it easier than before to do some of the following tedious job search tasks:

Finding the right person at a target company, like a hiring manager in a certain department, to discuss immediate and future job openings
Getting a reference from a past boss or co-worker
Finding information about a company and position before the interview
Searching posted job listings on a job board like the one on LinkedIn

The hidden power of LinkedIn is that it helps you find jobs you weren’t looking for or applying to directly.

LinkedIn research shows that “People with more than 20 connections are 34 times more likely to be approached with a job opportunity than people with less than 5 connections.”

Finding information

You can use LinkedIn to find out more than just information about your job search. You can use this immense database of professionals to find out what skills seem to be the most popular within a certain industry and job title. LinkedIn now has thousands of detailed Company Profiles that not only show company statistics but also recent hires, promotions, changes, and lists of employees closely connected with you.

Best of all, LinkedIn can help you find specific information on a variety of topics. You can do a search to find out the interests of your next sales prospect, the name of a former employee you can talk to about a company you like, or how you can join a start-up in your target industry by reaching out to the co-founder.

Expanding your LinkedIn network

Whether you want to move up in your industry, look for a new job, start your own company, or achieve some other goal, one way to achieve these goals is to expand your network. LinkedIn provides a fertile ground to reach like-minded and well-connected professionals who share a common interest, experience, or group membership. The site also provides several online mechanisms to reduce the friction of communication, so you can spend more time building your network instead of searching for the right person.