LinkedIn is a useful way to keep track of your network, but I tend to use it more often for research purposes. The information available tends to be hit or miss, so I’d recommend going in with the mindset of quickly filtering through the site rather than spending a lot of time on it. I’ll walk you through my experience using the site and what I’ve found useful.
Profiles
People and company profiles are where the action is. Here are my thoughts on what to look for:
- I tend to use LinkedIn to find fairly senior people in the company (VP and above), and I then add them to my general background searches. You can often find much more specific search engine results by including the names of senior management, and LinkedIn can be a good way to go beyond the leadership teams named on most companies’ sites.
- Another useful piece of information is the titles and connections between people. You can get pretty far constructing an org chart based on LinkedIn. Continue reading Using LinkedIn for Research