Harness the power of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is a business-oriented social networking site founded by Reid Hoffman in 2002. This site is available in 20 languages and is used in almost 200 countries all over the world. It is the most used professional networking site in the world.

Ahmed Abdullah is working as an accountant at McKesson Corporation in USA. After completing his HSC from Faujdarhat Cadet College, he went to the States for his undergrad in accounting. I asked him how LinkedIn fit the bill for him. He replied, “LinkedIn is really underutilized in Bangladesh. It's a two-way street and you need to take initiative and connect with people. I created a detailed profile of mine and used keywords and buzzwords. I started connecting with my professors, classmates, managers and also alumni. This gave me a huge pool of second and third degree connections. One of the most important things I learned is that you have to create value for yourself, show how others will be benefitted from you, only then can you convince people to take a look at you. After connecting with LinkedIn I took an initiative to meet some of them at a personal level too. In my case I got two internship offers from two different people I met via LinkedIn first. I also connected with my grad school admission committee and that tremendously helped my admission process. You need to be proactive and target your audience if you want to get some benefit out of it.”

Optima HR Solutions is a Bangladeshi company which gives management and training solutions to corporate needs. When asked about some of benefits he received from using LinkedIn, Optima's CEO and Co-founder Murshed Haider said, “I got business deals for Optima through LinkedIn. A couple of guys from my office also got their jobs via LinkedIn and now they are working overseas.”

Now, the question is how can we become active LinkedIn users and make the most out of it. Well read on because here is your intro to LinkedIn.

First thing's first
Upload a standard photo of yourself and fill up the basic information accurately. Do not leave any field vacant, rather try to fill up all the places because that would make your profile 100% complete, which means it is then a standard LinkedIn account. One of the specialties of LinkedIn is that your profile need not be boring with plain text. You can beautify your profile by adding multimedia files, images, links and also applications. This also makes your account more precise, says more about you, makes you look more professional, and attracts recruiters and investors.

Connect

Then the next thing to do is to connect. I think this is the only thing most of the people in our country do in LinkedIn - they just press connect and think their work is done. This is just the beginning.

Look for people who you know personally. Start connecting with them. You can import contacts from your email also. One of the amazing things about LinkedIn is that you cannot connect to someone you don't know personally or don't have a link with. People show up as 1st, 2nd and 3rd degree connections. The 1stdegree connection is your direct connection, the 2nd ones are those who are not your connection but are connected to your network in LinkedIn.

Get seen

Another really great feature of LinkedIn is its groups. These groups are jam-packed with businessmen, investors, recruiters and professionals. The first thing to do is to exploit the groups that best delivers your needs and brings you your target community. Join them but don't sit idle. Post articles, interact with other people and make conversations. The thing we fail to do in this site is engage. You need to post your activity, talk with people and network. Work on your visibility and you will get to taste the cream of the crop.

Here are some of the hottest LinkedIn groups for you to join, each of them aimed at a specific target group: Job Angels, Executive Suite, The Talent Buzz, Career Change Central, Jobs Alert, Indeed.com, Star: Candidate for Hire, Project: Get Hired, LinkedIn HR, A Job Needed - A Job Posted, Internships and Interns, Management Consulting Jobs, Personal Branding Network, and Career Rocketeer. These are some of the top used LinkedIn groups.

In reality LinkedIn has so much more to offer than Facebook, and you will realize it once you've learnt how to use it. So work your place up the ladder and get social on this exciting global network of professionals.