Wall Street Journal: If You’re Ignoring LinkedIn, You’re Hurting Your Career
Still scoffing about LinkedIn as not worth your time? WSJ author Joanna Stern aptly describes public perceptions of the social media landscape and LinkedIn’s place in it:
“At Social Media High, Facebook is the all-star quarterback, Twitter is the school paper’s editor in chief, and Snapchat is the mysterious, Harley-riding transfer student. That makes LinkedIn the nerd who skips prom for the ‘mathlympics.’”
Sixty-one percent of members visit LinkedIn only every few weeks (or even less often). This is unfortunate, because LinkedIn is a great resource for keeping tabs on what is going on in your industry, finding ideas for improving your business, gathering new leads for business development or career advancement, or searching for and winning a new job (or perhaps landing a fabulous new position when you didn’t realize you were open to one).
She points out that the apps for both Android and IOS have greatly improved recently, and are in many ways more friendly than the rather cluttered and historically non-intuitive (although more robust) desktop/PC website.
So, what can LinkedIn do for you? Here are the biggies:
Make you better at your current job
Build you a stronger professional network
Get you a new job
Are those enough reasons for LinkedIn to be a permanent tab in your browser and a go-to app on your smartphone? After all, a dynamite executive resume can’t do it all for you: It is critical to be actively building your network, improving your job skills, and increasing your industry knowledge.