Ever since I started my journey in online learning towards a certificate in Campus Recruiting, LinkedIn has come up in every course. It was a topic of discussion in the Introduction to Online Learning and Campus Recruiting classes, and in the course I just finished, Career Development Foundations, I was encouraged by the instructor and a classmate to stay connected via LinkedIn. Considering that I am now in the transition stage, from student to employee as my primary role, I think that it makes great sense to create and maintain a LinkedIn profile.
Of all the social media sites we have encountered in this class so far, LinkedIn was most unfamiliar to me. I found creating a profile itself to be quite straightforward, and I appreciated how the site guided me through the creation of the essential sections, such as experience and education. I was able to find classmates quite easily, as well as some outside contacts. I didn’t like how I was forced to choose how I knew the person I was inviting, however, as I didn’t really want to classify the Assistant Registrar (my supervisor’s boss) as a colleague, for instance, due to the large difference in status between our positions, yet also didn’t want to choose “Other,” because I have worked with her before.
After classmates and other contacts began accepting my connection requests, I noticed that when I viewed their profiles, I was asked if I wanted to endorse them. I like the idea of being able to speak to someone’s skills and let this be advertised, but when it comes to classmates, for example, I haven’t seen any of their professional work (only their work towards this course), so do not feel comfortable endorsing areas of expertise or skills unless I have seen evidence of this in the class. I noticed that one of the contacts from my other class endorsed me for some skills I had not included, like “Career Counselling,” which came as a surprise yet also compliment, as he must have appreciated my reflections and work regarding career development theories.
In terms of interacting with colleagues, I am finding myself most stuck at this stage. I understand that I can post a status update, and then others can comment on it, but I haven’t found much opportunity to interact with others in this way yet because very few profiles I am connected with have any recent activity. I think that it will take more time than just this module to begin establishing a strong network and presence on LinkedIn, and that I will have more to say and contribute as I continue to gain work experience.
One aspect of social media that was reaffirmed for me as I began exploring how I could interact with others on LinkedIn was how fast social media changes. I was looking for LinkedIn Answers, as described in our course text, only to discover that I couldn’t find it. A quick Google search revealed that as of January 31, this service was discontinued: http://www.linkedin-makeover.com/2013/01/21/linkedin-answers-alternatives/. Just goes to show how one will never be finished learning how to use a social media site.
Picture Credit: From http://biz.flairie.com/
Courtside Commentary 
Hi! This is a great post about your experience with LinkedIn. As someone who has no experience with LinkedIn ,I concur with your suggestion that more time will be needed to be able to fully engage in utilizing this form a of social media and to fully appreciate it’s value in staying connected with colleagues. I believe it is impossible to become proficient in any of the forms of social media that we will be looking at in this short introductory course- something which I must remind myself of when I become overwhelmed by how much there is to learn and how little I really know. In fact, I don’t think that one will ever learn everything there is to learn about social media since , as you state, it is constantly changing.
I’m glad you agree! I feel like we’re getting lots of tastes of different kinds of social media, but what will be most beneficial is taking this knowledge and applying it in depth after the course.
It’s a shame LinkedIn discontinued Answers. It was a nice feature and I miss it. Functionality comes and goes so quickly, it’s very difficult for the occasional user to keep up. The good news is there are sites (like mine) that work hard to get the word out about functionality changes so people can stay up to date without too much effort. Great blog post and thanks for the linkage!