Poll: Is linkedin only for consultants and the unemployed?

linkedin provides a fine way for professional colleagues to provide each-other with accolades for a job well done, thus boosting credibility for when you want to move vertically, outside of an organization.

"He's on Linkedin, Lemon. He might as well be dead." -- Jack on 30 Rock.

I think that the utility it serves is perhaps not how they present it. I see it as a Facebook of your work history perhaps. These are people you've met along the way, may be able to help you in the future, but generally it doesn't provide the sort of advantageous network effects you may get from, say, a key conference or social event, or just simply doing great work. This is just my experience, but I'd love hear the experiences of others.

No, and I think it can be useful for a lot of professions.

i think this is a false dichotomy. there's a lot of shades of gray between "employed = not using linkedin" and "unemployed/contracter = using linkedin"

i mean, i'm gainfully employed, but i maintain a portfolio type of website.

No, I work full time at a start up that's doing a lot of hiring. I use it as one tool among many when doing some background searching on people interviewing for spots on my team. If we have any shared associations, I'll ping those people to see what their opinion is.

Sometimes you also get an alternate picture of work history on linkedin that their resume doesn't show you. Some jobs that they might have omitted/dropped/expanded in comparison.

I voted yes, but maybe it's because I haven't found a way to use it yet. I don't use it to hire or sell social media services, so to me, it's almost worthless.

Yes

Although I haven't pursued any offers i've gotten some nice leads for positions with saleforce, amazon kindle, amazon web services, disney interactive, blackberry, bigfish games, netflix and a couple of smaller names via linkedin.

So i find it useful in that sense. The leads are often of a higher quality (actual hire managers, in-house hr) than what I get from email and head hunter voice messages.

I was very close to nabbing a book deal with packt through the service as well.

LinkedIn has two specific purposes for me.

1. Get rid of the need for a rolodex of business cards.

2. Allow me to track people's work history over the long-term when I meet people with whom I think I'd be interested in working some day in the future.

LinkedIn is amazing. Its such a boring, stupid website but a lot of business gets done through it.

My firm has gotten a ton of work through LinkedIn, usually from clients of ours recommending friends via LinkedIn.

So while I rarely log into the website, it definitely sends me money and so its quite valuable in my eyes.

Disclaimer: I am a consultant. :)

I was just thinking about this today. I check it once a week and all I ever see are connections being made. Guess this is good for sales people or recruiters looking for intro's.

If I am Product Manager or CEO at LinkedIn, I would buy or create ODesk on top of LinkedIn's data. They have all the professionals and work history.

We're interviewing right now and it's useful to get a little more background. I can look at a one-page resume and then look at the LinkedIn page for more detail.

No. It's also for nosy people.

It's useful if you're trying to raise seed/series A. Part of due diligence is looking at not just the size of your professional network and what you've accomplished but looking at the type of people you've worked on teams with and how your work was received.

A players have a positive network effect: You'll probably be more likely to have A player associations and recommendations.

Almost everyone is unemployed at some point.

You need to segment the audience a bit more - I am on the technical marketing and business development side of a large corporation and linkedin is an essential tool for keeping track of people as they move from company to company as well as within a company.

There is additional value in seeing who knows who and how I can get introduced to key decision makers at other companies.

A year ago I would have voted Yes, however I was recently recruited[1] via LinkedIn (while employed) so I voted No.

[1]: http://www.thepursuitofquality.com/post/51/how-online-profil... tldr; A recruiter found me via StackOverflow, followed the SO profile to my blog, and then contacted me via LinkedIn.

Its interesting to see how many employers use LinkedIn as the only way to apply.

I was recently recruited while employed via LinkedIn, so it's not only for the unemployed. Additionally, it helped me land the job because I saw that the two owners and I had some mutual colleagues from the past. I'm almost certain that we wouldn't have discovered that without LinkedIn (or at least not during the course of the interview).

Also recruiters, sales drones, and professional networkers lol ... get lots of contacts from those.

not as much for entrepreneurs and senior management types

Although I've been on LinkedIn for years it's had no significant utility value for me.

I never use LinkedIn. Seems useless (even for business) when there's Facebook.

It's a great tool for business development. Whenever I want to meet someone at X company I look at who I know there/who can introduce me there. Very valuable. You can't do that on facebook, it's too nosy/I'm not facebook friends with my business acquaintances. Also good to know their background.

Note, Facebook will look at your linkedin profile than contact you through facebook