Linkedin

[jp1]

Apparently there are people who follow linkedin as closely/often as I follow facebook. My new employer put out a press release about my hire yesterday. I didn't think anything of it. Last night I forgot to put my phone on do not disturb. (of all the nights to forget that...) Starting at 6:00 this morning my phone began buzzing every few minutes with notifications from people congratulating me because the article about it in Insurance Journal was in their feed.

It appears that I'm the only person in insurance who doesn't obsess about industry news. And also the only one who doesn't typically get up and start working at 6:00 every morning... Is this normal and I'm just out of touch? On the plus side the press release achieved its goal. My new employer looks like a heavy hitter and is getting attention for a major strategic initiative. Now I just need to figure out how to turn this publicity splash into success for both me and my employer by writing some new business. Woohoo.

[iris lilies]

Good for you jp!

[jp1]

Thanks IL. Putting phone on do not disturb now so that i can recover from last night’s aborted sleep.

[LDAHL]

I got my most recent job through LinkedIn. It’s like anything else: you been to separate the useful stuff from the fluff.

[catherine]

That's great!

As for LinkedIn, I don't follow it, and I don't post on it. My philosophy is, if I'm doing fine in my business without risking shooting myself in the foot with a poorly written post, I'll avoid the risk.

However, I did get a request for a gig just yesterday from a former colleague who tracked me down on LinkedIn.

[Rogar]

From a person who is no longer working, I find it next to useless. I try to maintain a presence and add to connections maybe hoping it will help people I have know find work. For someone looking to network for jobs or other paying work, it does seem like a useful tool. I did not know that people were obsessed about it as Facebook, which I also don't use.

[razz]

I have tried to unsubscribe from it for years without success. Is there a foolproof way to do this? Michaels Craft store is the same. Cannot get off it either so have switched these emails to the 'junk' file.

[jp1]

When I'm ready to retire in ten years I will either quit it or just junk email everything that comes from it. I already find it boring and can't imagine being more interested after I retire...

I've never posted anything to it the way I do on facebook. Only updated my job status when I've taken on new responsibilities or whatever. I suppose I need to do that again now that the whole world knows that I'm no longer working for mega-corp thanks to the article in Insurance Journal.

[ApatheticNoMore]

I've found it the most useless job site as well, every job board I've had better luck than linked in, most of their job ads seem obsolete frankly. But it's expected to have a linked in account, so I do it. I don't do any other social media, sometimes I read something on twitter.

[Yppej]

I am on it until I retire. Other social media does not interest me anymore.

[SteveinMN]

I've never quite figured out what LinkedIn is supposed to be, and I'm not sure they have either.

I've half-jokingly referred to it as "Facebook for working people" as they've added "Likes" and kept adding non-work "features" to a work networking site (for some reason an ad selling fancy refurbished boats keeps popping up in my feed even though it has nothing to do with my interests). LI is not comprehensive enough to serve as a business news site, it's too reliant on "influencers", and they don't heavily support what I consider to be one of the prime reasons it should exist: connecting people you know well enough to vouch for when someone else asks.

I have had success using LinkedIn to find members for a non-profit board of directors, though I was hampered by their "shotgun" approach -- it's easy to spray a lot of little hits around; it's much harder to make a clean bullseye. Our non-profit has some residence and experience requirements; LI's volunteers section is not granular enough to help me identify even which end of town you lived in or what experience a candidate might have had in the desired field. But it worked better than word-of-mouth.

Now that I'm retired, I too, wonder what to do with my LI account. I know some of my peers have marked themselves as retired, but that seems as purposeful as a vegan visiting a Brazilian steakhouse -- it raises the question of why you're even there. After so long I don't think I could respond to an inquiry about whether my connection Sanjay would be any good at helping the inquirer's Web security firm. He was fine when I worked with him years ago; but what he's done since? *shrug*

[herbgeek]

I've used Linked In to find people I might know at companies I've considered working at, or when I've had interviews to see if we have any people in common. Other people mostly do it for self promotion imo. Whatever. I have myself marked as retired, but I'm still interested in what former co workers are up to from time to time.