Getting Started with LinkedIn

In talking with other business associates about LinkedIn many have asked me what the web site is about. LinkedIn is a professional networking site so that one can connect or stay connected with past co-workers, managers, etc. The main goal is to be able to stay connected with people from your professional past that can hopefully help you in your career going forward. I personally think that this is a great idea. How often do we tell one another it is not always what you know, but who you know!

So the main premise is about who you know, and this will be one part of getting started with LinkedIn. The first step is to join the website and there are no costs involved. Once you have an account the next step will be to start working on your personal profile.

Your personal profile is very important as this is where you get to build out your resume of where you have worked, your skills that you have learned, your education and, most importantly, how to get in contact with you. You will want to include all the ways that you are comfortable sharing. I say "comfortable sharing," because you probably do not want to connect this online profile with your Facebook or MySpace page. This is your professional image, and you do not need your future boss to know that you went to some club in Cancun while on vacation and became drunk and taken to jail. Leave those stories on a place not linked to this site.

You will want to ensure that you have the proper dates for when you have worked with different companies or organizations as this is part of step two on how people will find you, and how you will find people. Once you have your online resume in place you are ready to go to the Contacts Link on the Top and Choose; "Add Connections" This will allow you to find people by email address or by previous employers. This is why having correct dates in place will work to your benefit. As LinkedIn will do an auto search for those companies on your list for the years that you worked at that company. If it finds anyone that you might have known those people are added to the "verify" list and you can verify that you knew them.

When you send an invitation via company locator or by email, the other person will have to confirm that they know you and that they want to have you as a contact within LinkedIn. If someone is inviting you, then you will need to verify the connection and how you know them. The idea is that you want to build your connections the best that you can, so that you can be seen by others.

As mentioned in the beginning this is just a "getting started with LinkedIn" guide and within this article I cannot go into all the functions of LinkedIn . With that said, I would like to share one other area that you will want to pursue as a person new to LinkedIn , and that is referrals and referring others.

Under your profile is an area called recommendations, and this is an important area to begin to build upon as well. For this area gives other the opportunity to write a recommendation about your or the company that you worked with at the time. Most generally you want your connections to write something personal about you and how your helped them, etc. What was is that you brought to the table to that specific situation that was unique to you? This is what you want in your profile. This helps later when people are looking at your profile and reading these recommendations to see how you might fit into their organization. This is the whole point about LinkedIn. As you want that other company coming to you asking you to join their team because you are good at your profession and they need your specific skills on their team to win.