4 things that confuse me about LinkedIn

A few months ago I signed up for LinkedIn.com. If you are unfamiliar with the site it is a social network aiming at professionals with job history and recommendations from peers being the main focus of the profile page.  I mostly let my profile squander into irrelevance as I filed LinkedIn under the “new site I hastily signed up for but never used” category.

But in the past few days I have gotten a few “recommendations” and the site seeming to be hitting a tipping point by appearing in magazines, and being the subject of conversations with fellow graduating seniors. This, coupled with my quest for future employment, made me wonder if I am under utilizing this possible tool. However despite how hard I try, I can’t decide if I should take LinkedIn seriously. In theory, LinkedIn should be most useful social network.

Unfortunately, LinkedIn’s profile takes more work than the average Facebook or MySpace with not so immediate results. LinkedIn is meant to be a means to get a job, but several questions plague me:

1. Has one ever been hired as a result of their LinkedIn profile?
2. Is LinkedIn just trying to be the result result when the user’s name is Googled?
3. As a journalist, shouldn’t we let our writings that appear in a search engine speak louder than any professional networking site?
4. Am I the only one that sees the same flaws in LinkedIn as any social network?  You know… “connections” that you may not know, and popularity hounds?

Plus every time I see someone’s profile on LinkedIn, I can’t help but think they have one foot out the door. It’s like saying to the world “Here’s where I work, but I’m much too qualified”.

So today I begin taking LinkedIn seriously with a cautious optimism that the time spent will pay off in some capacity.  Consider it a very lame New Years Resolution…