Linkedin - touted as the professional “Facebook,” is a professional social network where you pick your “connections,” vice friends. For regular users, there are regular professional posts and articles that will appear, in general either tied to your areas of interest or posted by your other professional contacts. With most of my connections being in the security and defense services, most of the posted articles I see are from that sector. Yet these articles are very educational and spread wide in applicability as well.
Since I am registered Personal Protective Specialist, some recent articles in that area included an exploration of ethical conflicts working with the client during protection services, and a ‘lessons learned’ from a recent incident where paparazzi got inside the protective bubble. Since many of my contacts are from a previous job with a security contractor, articles about government contracting, force protection, and even a post from Eric Prince are common.
For me, it is a great way to stay linked to these fields of interest even though I am not actively employed as a protective specialist. Since I also have some classmates and instructors from my FSU time, I also get some postings on instructional theory and developments in that field as well. There is less personal stuff in LinkedIn than on Facebook, and more thought-provoking, professional information. Another advantage over Facebook is that you can have contacts that would not be friends, such as executives that you have worked under.
One issue that might be a problem is the distribution of your contacts. The wider the spectrum of fields represented in the contact list, the broader your postings will be. I actually went through and reviewed my connections and found that half were from my time at that renowned (or infamous) defense services and security contractor. Most of them were coworkers but some of them were clients. Most of my coworkers have moved to other companies, but in the same general field, so the posts tend to stay in that domain.
In the realm of looking at different tools in WEB 2.0, I think it can be a very useful tool for professional development with a line of work. What has been your experience with LinkedIn and how do you view its use?
I made a LinkedIn account once when I needed information on an individual. I was completing an interview as a part of a class assignment and hastily made an account so that I could view this person's profile. I didn't take the time then to really explore the platform. After your post I went back to it. Seems like a much better way to connect with professionals. I have a FB account, but that isn't where I want to connect professionally. That is more for friends and family. I'm going to explore it a little more.
ReplyDeleteThat may have been the class we shared because I remember doing that too. I had an account prior, but had to upgrade to complete the assignment.
DeleteI find I sometimes get requests from other people in competitive companies trying to get someone to friend them in order to get more access and leverage to people in our company. Sometimes they are head-hunters trying to poach our best employees. Being careful about who you accept "friend" requests from is a good rule of thumb across all social media tools.
ReplyDeleteI have had a Linkedin since college. I did a Marketing Internship as a part of my undergrad studies at FSU and was required to make an account on Linkedin. I think it is a great tool for connecting and I know many people who have had success finding jobs through posts and connection on LinkedIn. I have not utilized it to its fullest but if I enter the job hunt market again I will definitely look through my connections to see who can assist. To your point, many people have LinkedIn connections with tons of people they don't know really know or have any link too and their posts or connections may not ever be useful but you just never know. The world is all about who you know, right?
ReplyDeleteI am also trying to build my LinkedIn network. However, since LinkedIn is not as popular as Facebook in my home country, my LinkedIn network is much smaller than Facebook, and many of my LinkedIn friends are not active LinkedIn users.
ReplyDeleteI sometimes wonder how to manage my LinkedIn account under this condition :)
I appreciate your thoughts on LinkedIn. I have long deleted my Facebook account as after 13 years on the platform, there were so many people to keep up with and all of the political back and forth in a post 2016 world just felt so toxic.
ReplyDeleteIn trying to initially build my LinkedIn presence before I had a lot of work experience, I accepted a few connections from those I did not know. It snowballed into receiving dozens and dozens of connections requests, which I accepted initially. I then started to receive messages from people that seemed to be more interested in using the site as Tinder rather than a professional connection platform. I am still in the process of trying to purge these connections as I would like to begin using LinkedIn to actually post content as well!