What can my LinkedIn profile do ?

LinkedIn is a professional social network that can help leverage your career for business contacts, marketing your profile and capturing references. Also, companies where many people would want to work have profiles and key individuals on the site. You can learn a lot about who you would work with and who you should contact to get an inside edge on a job. So what we do with our LinkedIn profile makes a huge difference to whether or not we can drive value through our network .

In the good times of the economy we find the recruiters annoying and irritating and yet , today is an age when each one of us is yearning for one to find us . The recruiters use LinkedIn as a solid support resource to find profiles and to run reliable reference checks on prospects and candidates . As a candidate you can also use LinkedIn to research about the company that is recruiting you and who are the top guys in that company . In short you can get a preview of what your new workplace will look like .

The key to success on LinkedIn is a 100% complete profile with references from your superiors , peers and direct reports . The size of your network is also a good factor . If your network is well spread and has good numbers then you will get good responses for queries and endorsement requests . In the event of you looking for a change , the larger and widespread network will help immensely .If you are a service provider then LinkedIn is a great professional platform to pitch yourself in and get a few leads .

Overall it is a powerful professional connection medium that if used the right way can

• Increase your visibility
• Improve your connectability
• Improve your Google PageRank
• Enhance your search engine results
• Perform blind, reverse and company reference checks
• Increase the relevancy of your job search
• Make your interview go smoother
• Gauge the health of a company
• Gauge the health of an industry
• Track startups
• Ask for professional advice
• Integrate in to a new job
• Scope out competition, customers, partners

So what are you waiting for ? Get cracking on your LinkedIn profile !!

Technorati : LinkedIn, Networking, Social Media
Del.icio.us : LinkedIn, Networking, Social Media