LinkedIn

Pros Efficient for connecting with professionals from just about every industry. Deep search and filtering features. Lets you create a detailed professional profile others can search. Great job boards. Cons Glut of menu options and services. Difficult to figure out how to unsubscribe from unwanted emails. Expensive Premium accounts. Bottom Line LinkedIn is the most developed business- and career-oriented networking site out there. A great job board and plenty of services for connecting hiring companies to talented staff make it one of the most important resources for people will find new jobs and opportunities, while also building their reputations. By Jill Duffy

For millions of people, LinkedIn (free; premium accounts available) is the number one online network for developing a professional network, finding new opportunities, and building a career. Everyone over the age of 20, should have a LinkedIn account. I've heard the odd complaint that the site isn't well designed for certain job functions, such as academics, and that users have been enrolled against their wishes in multiple email lists (not to mention that unsubscribing isn't as straightforward as it should be)—and yes, I'll give you that. But the benefits of LinkedIn far outweigh its nuisances, making it a clear Editors' Choice site and one that I would recommend virtually every adult use.

The site, which launched in 2003, is the place where professionals stay connected. You can think of it as a social networking site—and certainly, a good deal of socialization does take place—although it's really more of a professional networking site. I use it as an exclusive replacement for business cards, which are almost always out of date within a year. With LinkedIn, I can find people from past jobs, volunteer work, schools, professional groups, and put the onus on them to keep their contact information current. Similarly, people in my network can find me. Whether they're searching for someone with specific skills for a new opportunity or are merely looking for an introduction to another contact, LinkedIn facilitates that communication and many others that have real business and career value.

As with other networking sites, users set up a free account and draft an online profile, only here profiles resemble resumes and CVs. Where social networking sites frame tiresome lists of movies, bands, and favorite quotes as evidence of one's persona, LinkedIn emphasizes professional affiliations, work experiences, skills, and job titles. I've noticed that some of my contacts use Facebook, in much the same way that I use LinkedIn. Hundreds of millions of people are on Facebook, and you can add your job history and professional skills to your profile, too. But I see too many gaps in Facebook that make it unsuitable for business. Its privacy settings aren't as well designed as LinkedIn's for professional use. Facebook requires too much vigilance ("babysitting") to keep your reputation squeaky clean and still publicly searchable. If you lock down your Facebook profile and enable all the privacy settings and approval requirements, no one but your friends will be able to find you, which limits your ability to network effectively in a business sense. Facebook doesn't have a job board, either, or a way for employers to search widely for candidates that meet very specific criteria.

LinkedIn simply provides a huge array of business-networking services, which can seem overwhelming or unnecessary at times, but most people don't need to use every last one to reap the benefits of having an account. In that sense, LinkedIn can be low maintenance, which is a huge benefit to busy professionals.

Setting Up

Free to use, LinkedIn requires little more than an email address and password to get started, although you'll want to fill in your profile completely to get all that the site has to offer. As mentioned, the profile is similar to a resume, with a summary section and job history prominently displayed. LinkedIn prompts you to upload other information about yourself, including a photo. Until your profile is 100 percent filled in, the site will remind you periodically to complete the process, and it's mutually useful that it does. Users get more out of the site when their profiles are complete, and the more user data the site has, the better an experience it delivers.

The next step is to connect to people you know. You can find them by importing names and addresses from a variety of email programs: Outlook, Gmail, Yahoo! Mail, Hotmail, Aol, Mac.com, Gmx in several languages, and many others. If one of your providers isn't supported, you can always upload a .csv, .txt, or .vcf file containing other contacts.

As you connect with co-workers, friends, and business partners, LinkedIn will begin to suggest people you may know based on shared relationship and company affiliations. Sometimes I find these suggestions, which appear on the right rail of the main dashboard, a little obtrusive, nagging me to connect more, more, more!

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LinkedIn (for iPad)

By Jill Duffy

Attention LinkedIn users: Don't set your expectations too high for the LinkedIn iPad app (free). In fact, keep them quite low, because that's the only way to find value in the few interesting features it does have and not drown out the positives  with laments of everything it should have or do, yet doesn't.

The app itself isn't half bad, but in light of what the full website offers, the mobile version falls yards short of delivering on users' expectations. Can you use the app to look up information about people? Yes! Does it show status updates from colleagues, acquaintances, and businesses that you follow? Absolutely! But try to look for jobs—one of the most important uses of LinkedIn—and nary a posting you'll find. You also can't interact much, aside from posting status updates, commenting on other people's updates, and looking through your inbox. Put aside any expectations of searching for jobs, endorsing your colleague's skills, or penning thoughtful invitations to connect with new people.

I don't say any of this lightly either. When I reviewed the full LinkedIn website, I rated it four and a half out of five stars and named it an Editors' Choice. Everyone over the age of 20 should use LinkedIn. But not everyone with an iPad needs the LinkedIn iPad app. But if you look at it not as the iPad app version of LinkedIn but instead as an app that leverages your LinkedIn account and connects it to your iOS calendar, then it's a neat tool. Perhaps it should have been branded with a different name, like "LinkedIn Appointments," or "Before You Meet," or some such. 

Interface

The interface styling looks right. It uses a smart and contemporary color scheme as well as appropriately sized text, thumbnail images, and buttons. Swiping and button-pushing, however, isn't as smooth as the outer appearance might suggest. In testing the LinkedIn iPad app, I never felt that it was intuitive. I'd swipe a panel left or right and wonder what might be behind it, rather than feel certain that I knew. iPad apps shouldn't surprise you in this way. They make it easy to figure out how to access information you want or complete a task. LinkedIn relies too much on guesswork just to navigate the app.

Features

The LinkedIn iPad app does feature three primary areas when you first download it and launch it: All Updates, You, and Messages. Anyone familiar with LinkedIn will immediately home in on what's lacking here, namely job postings.

The App Updates area essentially displays, in digital-magazine form, various updates from the people and businesses you follow. When your contacts link to articles, the LinkedIn app shows a nice preview of the piece and the first paragraph or two (dependent on space), then provides a link to the original article. You can add comments to updates from the LinkedIn app, which I appreciated, especially in light of the fact that other interactive abilities in the app are limited.

The You section shows your profile, but you can't edit it at all. Again, any current LinkedIn user will be sorely disappointed by what's missing here. It's a little beyond me why LinkedIn would have an iPad app at all if users can't promote themselves effectively. It's a huge and crucial component of the service. If you swipe through the You pages, you'll see your profile, and then a scrolling list of people separated into a few categories, such as "Who's viewed your profile" and "People you may know." From here, you can look at profiles of people with whom you're not currently connected, but you can't craft a personal invitation to link to one another, as you can on the full site. If you send an invitation to connect from the app, you're stuck with a generic and rather impersonal canned message.

The last section, Messages, shows a summary of your inbox and recent activity making new connections. Again, you can select any person to open their profile and read more about them, but other interactions are limited to swapping messages—no endorsing their skills nor writing a glowing review of their work. 

The app does have one feature that makes it special: the ability to connect to your calendar and automatically display information about people before you meet with them. It works by allowing LinkedIn access to your iOS calendar, and by looking for matches among attendee names in meetings and your LinkedIn network. If you don't want to connect the service to your calendar, you can look up people manually prior to meeting them using the app's search bar, which works as advertised.

Staying LinkedIn

I'd look upon the LinkedIn iPad app more favorably had it simply come with a different name. What it does do—let you search your network, read up on your contacts, and connect to deep information about people with whom you have scheduled meetings—makes it a worthwhile app to have, but doesn't make up for the fact that it lacks several key features of the site. If you really want to use LinkedIn on your iPad, type linkedin.com into Safari's address bar, and then close the ad recommending you download the app.

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LinkedIn

By Jill Duffy

For millions of people, (free; premium accounts available) is the number one online network for developing a professional network, finding new opportunities, and building a career. Everyone over the age of 20, should have a account. I've heard the odd complaint that the site isn't well designed for certain job functions, such as academics, and that users have been enrolled against their wishes in multiple email lists (not to mention that unsubscribing isn't as straightforward as it should be)—and yes, I'll give you that. But the benefits of far outweigh its nuisances, making it a clear Editors' Choice site and one that I would recommend virtually every adult use.

The site, which launched in 2003, is the place where professionals stay connected. You can think of it as a social networking site—and certainly, a good deal of socialization does take place—although it's really more of a professional networking site. I use it as an exclusive replacement for business cards, which are almost always out of date within a year. With , I can find people from past jobs, volunteer work, schools, professional groups, and put the onus on them to keep their contact information current. Similarly, people in my network can find me. Whether they're searching for someone with specific skills for a new opportunity or are merely looking for an introduction to another contact, facilitates that communication and many others that have real business and career value.

View the Original article