Thursday, January 3, 2008, 8:12pm
Utilizing LinkedIn to Pick Up Freelancing Projects
After creating my LinkedIn account what seems like years ago and letting my profile sit virtually empty for all that time, today I finally decided to put in some work and jazz it up. It all started with a few people at work getting into it, and then suddenly I became curious about the real benefit of “expanding my network”. So, after about an hour of filling in all the information LinkedIn suggests (except the picture, which I’ll add later tonight or tomorrow), here’s my sweet, updated profile.
I’m thinking to myself that this is kind of cool. Maybe, for example, I’ll be “introduced” to other people in my network and possibly get to know some really interesting people, or maybe I’ll even score some exposure for Snowdrop. Sure enough, not three hours later I received an email from a colleague looking for someone to develop and manage a website for his recently-founded career development consulting firm; our “connection” turned out to be beneficial for both of us, and now we are partners.
In conclusion, I’m now a fan of LinkedIn. There are many people that your friends or your friends’ friends probably know that could help you in your career, one way or another. It just makes sense to reach out and try to connect with these people - it takes very little effort and the payoff for both of you could be very big. I’ll defer to one of my favorite books for more discussion on this topic.
Even if this is the only thing that ever comes out of my LinkedIn profile, I’ll be satisfied.
