LinkedIn and Branding: Create Online Brand for Yourself

As of June 2013, LinkedIn reports more than 225 million acquired users in more than 200 countries and territories. (Reference from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/LinkedIn) More and more companies use LinkedIn to post their job openings. Also, human resource from many companies directly search people and connect with them through LinkedIn account. Therefore, having a LinkedIn account with your up-to-date education and working experience is very important for job hunting.

Once you finished your profile in LinkedIn, you can start your job searching. LinkedIn provide job listing and searching service, which is similar to the traditional job searching website such as Indeed, but with much more useful features. If you search a job in LinkedIn, you will find that at the bottom of each job list there is a sentence “1(or other number) person in your network” (as shown in the following picture). With this information, you have the chance to see whether there is somebody you know who can help you to get the interview opportunity of your favorite job. LinkedIn also provide another amazing service that you can check who has reviewed your profile and how many people reviewed your profile during some certain period. This kind of service breaks down information asymmetry between employee and employer for a long time.

LinkedIn is also a social networking website partly like Facebook, but for different purpose. LinkedIn is a social platform for professional connections. You can only find professional information of people in LinkedIn, while Facebook is the place to share your personal life with your friends. LinkedIn help people generate and organize their professional connections. After finishing your person profile, LinkedIn can automatically identify people who come from the same university or the same company as you. Then you can connect with them and receive all update of their professional information on LinkedIn. Furthermore, you can also review your friends’ connections, which will help you to get to know somebody who might give you opportunity for your next job. This is really a powerful way to largely expand your professional network, and you might be surprised to find that the distance between you and President Barack Obama is only three or four people.