I’m not an early adopter - I just hang around a bunch of them.

By November 17, 2003, enough of these early adopter types (aka friends) had bugged me about LinkedIn that I finally felt compelled to sign up and give it a whirl. For a long, long time it was mostly my techie friends there. And not much happening.

Years later, when facebook took off and I became a Twitter addict, I figured LinkedIn was dead. Unlike these other social media tools, LinkedIn wasn’t “giving back”. You could collect data (ie make connections and add resume items) but beyond that, what was the use? It seemed limited to being a virtual file cabinet for resumes - and I’ve already got enough places to file things, thanks.

But surprisingly, LinkedIn has made the leap! They have slowly added features that made it relevant. Features such as:

• Q&A that allows you to ask your network for help - or be the helpful one offering advice in your area of expertise. Handily, you can also target questions by geography if you’re looking for a local resource.
• Profile pictures are a helpful innovation - now I can use LinkedIn to help me put a face with a name (an important part of my job, and not a natural strength - especially out of context. So if I met you at the Ad Club and don’t recognize you at the grocery store, please forgive me!)
• Network updates seemed a little TOO facebook-like at first, but have also turned out to be a helpful way to get a ‘heads-up’ when an old friend connects to a mutual acquaintance.
• Extra bonus: when you reconnect after having been out of touch, now you have current contact data. So the interesting twist here is that my old favorite salesforce.com is becoming LESS relevant because it still forces manual data entry. (Lest my salesforce palz read this, I do realize it has a gadget for requesting updates, but that forces my contact to do the updating work, and they don’t have spare time on their hands either.)
• Recruiting is something LinkedIn is REALLY good at and why you see most recruiters are in the 500+ category (if they’re not, you might wonder why not?) They can do the usual ‘who do you know who?’ broadcast - but they can also proactively search their network (within 3 degrees) for potential candidates and ask for introductions.
  It’s a headhunters dream - the rolodex is right there on the table.
• This brings me to the real reason I wrote this post. If you’re looking for a job, you can’t NOT be in LinkedIn. It positively shocks me that every college and university is not making this clear to today’s graduating class. Monster is not where it’s at! There are only recruiters there. In LinkedIn, you can connect to the people in the trenches - people with a connection to you - who will care enough to answer a couple of questions over email, talk to you on the phone, or point you in the direction of someone who will help you in your search.

In other words - you’ve heard it’s who you know that counts - and LinkedIn is a ‘real life’ manifestation of that. I’ve heard people say it’s the first place they now go to do a people search - before Google! If you’re looking to drum up business, find a job or fill a job, you need to be in LinkedIn. Today!