Getting LinkedIn

The tech journalist, Joanna Stern, of Wall Street Journal, wrote an article on 12 April, 2016 with the title “Ignoring LinkedIn Is Hurting Your Career.” She says quite a few positive things about LinkedIn, and, regarding getting a job, she says “one of the most important things you can do on the Internet is create […]

The tech journalist, Joanna Stern, of Wall Street Journal, wrote an article on 12 April, 2016 with the title “Ignoring LinkedIn Is Hurting Your Career.” She says quite a few positive things about LinkedIn, and, regarding getting a job, she says “one of the most important things you can do on the Internet is create a strong LinkedIn profile.” She is also very quick to contrast LinkedIn from Facebook, with the conclusion that you may find the former to be more worth your while than the latter and all the other social media platforms out there.
Like Facebook, LinkedIn is a social media platform, but one that focuses on professionals (career people). Thus, while you may share your mindless photos, puppies, weddings, or virtually anything on Facebook, LinkedIn is not intended to be used that way. Rather, it is an environment where professionals’ interests reign supreme.
As much as I like the computer, Internet, and Information and Communication Technology (ICT), I am usually very cautious when it comes to social media platforms. My reasons are quite clear: spam messages and the associated overhead in processing them, not deriving values from the time investment, unnecessary publicity, and so on. For example, I do not currently maintain a Facebook page precisely for these reasons, and I don’t tweet! In fact, I am usually very concerned when I see young people spend valuable time working these platforms, when they could have been studying to better their lot in life, or otherwise developing themselves to become more marketable and employable compared to their peers.
When I am not very sure about a concept or something, what I do is to dig deeper into it, in order to avoid the trap of the “fear of the unknown.” Many good things are unknown, so you need to dig deeper. That’s precisely what I am doing with LinkedIn. To this end, I purchased the book “LinkedIn Success: Kick-Start Your Business, Brand, and Job Search,” with Wayne Breitbarth as the author and Greenleaf, Texas, USA, as the publisher.
To Breitbarth, there is no two-way about it: LinkedIn is the way to go. In fact, he seems to be saying “Be LinkedIn or Perish,” professionally that is. According to him, LinkedIn is all about using the Internet to find people and to be found by people – in addition to using face-to-face method of meeting people. He also says that LinkedIn is the world’s largest online business networking site.
LinkedIn is estimated to have approximately 400 million users, with 2 new members being added every second of the day. Approximately 40% of those members are in the U.S., and more than 80% of users are university degree holders, and about that proportion make business decisions.
Although LinkedIn is considered by many as the “Facebook for businesspeople,” Breitbarth says that LinkedIn has significant processes and controls that keep it from becoming like Facebook. He points out that “many facets of Facebook – such as pictures of your pest tagged with your name (and possibly including beer bongs and bikinis), relationship statuses, and religious and political views – are things that totally turn off most businesspeople from using the site for professional networking.” Breitbarth also says that Facebook does have applications for businesses (especially those that sell directly to consumers), but many businesspeople feel more comfortable with LinkedIn because of its built-in controls and personal settings. I’ll strongly encourage you to get a copy of his book and read, so as to be well schooled about LinkedIn. You can then make your decision as to whether or not you should join.
Here is some data from Breitbarth’s book that is intended to convince you. Say you and Musa are friends and both of you are linked on LinkedIn. Let’s say you have 1,190 contacts in your LinkedIn network – these are your “first-degree” connections. These people in turn have connections of their own, giving you 109,800 connections at the second level (second-degree). By the third-level, you’ll have 5.7 million people to whom you are connected! This represents a tremendous space of people that you can market to if you are a business person. This obviously drives home the concept – the Kevin Bacon concept – that we are all connected by six degrees of separation or less to virtually everyone in the world. By the design of LinkedIn, the 5.7 million connections are devoid of puppets, wedding pictures, or other trivials that you find in Facebook. This is obviously compelling statistics.
Okay, the description above is somewhat ideal; reality and human factors will obviously creep in. You can find these in the posted comments on Stern’s article. Detractors are basically saying that LinkedIn is looking more like Facebook these days and there are spams and all. To help you decide, please dig deeper!