LinkedIn – The Online Resume

By Doug Hafford

My recent article on Social Networking covered a lot of ground with respect to the new ways you can put yourself or your firm out there on the web. In this article we will focus on the professional side of Social Networking sites; LinkedIn.

LinkedIn was founded in 2002 and launched in May of 2003 as a professional networking site. As of today, Linkedin has more than 60 million users in over 200 countries worldwide. Looking at those statistics alone tells you how valuable the service is if you want to get noticed, or connect with other professionals.

You start by setting up your own LinkedIn page. The process is very simple and free of charge. As you are entering your business information and even a picture or two, you quickly see that you are building a resume’. You can fill in as much or as little of your professional life as you wish including things like current position, past positions, education, your connections and other information. One of the very nice features of LinkedIn is that you can then publish some or all of your information to people outside LinkedIn by using their “public profile” feature. When a web search is done on your name, this will generally be one of the first things that come up. Thus you can have control over the initial impression people have of you when they want to find out more about you.