7 LinkedIn & More

For those who haven’t heard of it or have yet to join, let me tell you why you might want to join LinkedIn. But first I must tell you about the network effect, the network effect is when the value of the product or service is dependent upon how many people are using the product or service. The telephone is a good example: if there were only 3 people that had a phone then it wouldn’t be that big of deal. If just you had a phone and no one else then it’d be pretty useless having a phone wouldn’t it? But if 90% of people had a phone in the world then you having phone would be really important and not having one would be a huge disadvantage. Same thing when I had finally converted to Facebook from MySpace. I liked MySpace a lot because, being web designer at heart, I liked how you can customize almost the entire appearance of your page with html. But the amount of users on Facebook was growing so much that the usefulness, the value, of MySpace declined so much that MySpace became pointless for me to have and I’d never talk to my friends far away unless I joined Facebook.

LinkedIn realized that Facebook was a great idea but was more of an unprofessional setting so LinkedIn decided to get on the bandwagon with the network effect and though it would be a great idea to make a social network for professionals, for jobs, job offers, references, etc. I know right, a social network for professionals? I really don’t like this, but it has become a reality that it’s not just being good at what you do but who you know too, I prefer to be chosen solely by my merits and my ethics, there’s just too much competition in today’s world. So LinkedIn isn’t a bad idea.

What great about LinkedIn is that it’s almost like handing out your resume out to the 135 million LinkedIn users and when it comes to getting a job the more exposure the better. Even better than “more” is “targeted,” what I mean is for example if you’re a lawyer what good would it do for a hospital looking for doctors to see your profile? Your right, nothing; what makes LinkedIn better is that employers can search for people in career field of the position they need to be filled. In addition to that companies can target what location the potential employees, a lot of companies don’t like getting job applications from employees out of state. LinkedIn gives you the professional targeting on a large scale.

Admittedly LinkedIn won’t be the best in finding jobs like other sites such as Monster.com, Job.com, SnagAJob.com, CareerBuilder.com, HelpWanted.com, EastCarolinaHelpWanted.com, NorthCarolinaHelpWanted.com, but LinkedIn is more than for finding jobs. Wouldn’t you like it as you are currently working at a company and you could get a serious job offer from another company for more money? That’s what LinkedIn can do for you; those websites mentioned earlier follow the traditional way of getting better jobs were you only look for jobs when you’re out of a job (or about to be) but imagine the amount of better job offers you could’ve had when you were working. Even the professor teaching this class greatly benefited from LinkedIn, (if I recall correctly) a friend and co-worker from a past company my professor used to work for got a message about 10 years later from this former co-worker about a wonderful job offer and my professor took the job, if it weren’t for LinkedIn my professor would’ve never heard of the job. So if you're reading this blog clearly you're interested in the same career field as I am, and it might benefit us both to add each other so feel free to add me JennaBiz!