LinkedIn

[nleamons]

I use LinkedIn. If used correctly: it can be a useful tool. From what I read: sometimes employers will check LinkedIn to help them in finding a suitable employee. I find that having LinkedIn can help me stay touch with some of my friends.

[SweetSecret]

I am on LinkedIn too, and pretty much everyone I know professionally is as well. I have received messages from recruiters through it, but for me that is more rare. I have numerous ex's on LinkedIn each with multiple graduate degrees, and the one who has his MBA & JD would receive probably 1-2 messages from recruiters per week but he is at the CEO level (salary in the multiple hundreds per year) managing multi million dollar businesses for corporate umbrellas. There is also a feature now to let recruiters know that you are open to new job possibilities without making it public knowledge to your network (i.e. boss & co-workers), which is really handy. I have read that sometimes recruiters will not present a prospective employee to an employer if their rÃsumà is on job sites like Indeed/Monster because then the employers could have recruited them directly and thus do not want to pay for those connections. To me, it seems like there is a lot more advantage to LinkedIn at the mid to high executive level, and not so much of a benefit below that unless you are an independent contractor who can use their freelancer capabilities to find work. Last year I found someone to do some heavy code changes on a WordPress widget that was written in a language I was not very familiar with, and the company I work for has easily paid him over $800 for a few days of work. Personally, I think it is useful to be on... but I have my portfolio pieces on my profile to help attract new design clients.