Social Networking - A Beginners Guide to LinkedIn

 LinkedIn.com is the first job site combining the best in two areas: the power to examine for jobs online through its job search engine and the chance to network with like-minded individuals and friends to intensify the job search. Apparently LinkedIn.com target market is almost all areas across the world which people understand English. As the largest professional networking site, currently LinkedIn.com has 150 million users in 200 countries worldwide. LinkedIn Corporation is located in Mountain View, CA 94043, USA.

LinkedIn.com is currently not only an assemblage of resumes and unemployed college graduates. Instead, it has hiring solutions division letting employers to post job openings by paying. This division's revenue was up to $121.6 million. In terms of web popularity, LinkedIn.com is ranked 9 and 29 at Google and Alexa Page Rank respectively and it has 24 Wikipedia Trust Links.

What is Offered by LinkedIn.com to Employees and Employers?

LinkedIn.com offers three essential features for its users: It allows users (without leaving the site) to post a resume and profile, to establish a professional/ social network, and to seek for job listings. In their network users can ask for recommendations from others. When users indicate interest in a job, the site shows them who in their network working already at that company. It also gives users a potential inside track. LinkedIn no more has a relationship with Twitter letting members cross-post as well as link their profiles to the two platforms.

The job postings of LinkedIn.com are of the top quality, and if a user has a connection to someone knowing already about that specific job, then even before the user gives in a resume, he or she has got a way in. A detailed how-to guide called "How to Use LinkedIn" can be found in the website to help users wanting to dive to LinkedIn's inner workings. The job listing of larger mega-site like Monster.com or Indeed.com overshadows those of LinkedIn.com but in the mentioned mega sites there is no social media site coming so close to it in professional connections like in LinkedIn.com.

In LinkedIn.com the features of Job search and networking are free. However, with premium membership fee starting from $20 to $40 per month users can get things like direct email to other members and featured status. In other words, it is free to subscribe LinkedIn.com but if users want to have a premium account then the starting fee is $20 per month.

In terms of interface LinkedIn.com shuns the ascetic listings format of job search sites, but compared to an utterly social network like Facebook it provides fewer graphics or photos and more text. Its information and formatting are fully focused on the professional aspect. The home page of registered users, once the users are logged in, show them people they are connected to, updates from those in their network, new people whom users may know, who has viewed their profile, companies they might want to learn/ follow, jobs they might like, and headlines that might be of interest. Usually reviewers consider LinkedIn.com as user-friendly or easy to use. However there is rarely specific comment about the site's design.

The Pros and Cons about LinkedIn.com

Among the pros of LinkedIn.com are:

• For job seekers it is the best job working. It is like Facebook with professional people so it is a great way to stay connected to the business world.

• Two excellent services in a pack: awesome networking site and job search engine.

• Users can disable their "Public Profile", it is part of confidentiality.

• It combines features of networking as well as job search.

• It has excellent peer review and reputation.

• It is a good way to find individuals that can do certain stuff as users can post a profile and resume.

• It is also an excellent site to stay in touch with previous individuals users have worked with.

Among the cons of LinkedIn.com are:

• Unless from peers, there is no career advice or how-to.

• Subscribing is as easy as pressing an attractive button but cancelling the subscription is almost impossible.

• The web is less user-friendly.

• Only for simple privileges users have to pay. For example LinkedIn.com requires payment to see the actual profiles of who have viewed the users, and more exposure only to see the more description about who has viewed the user. That's all the main reason of subscribed users do not visit the site much.

• Users can't really contact any profile outside of their current network unless they pay for that facility or they upgrade from standard to a "premium" account.

• At least when it is compared to Dice or other job boards, there's no realistic jobs posted in LinkedIn.com. However, there are great groups having decent discussion topics to browse.

• Many of the website's features are broken. Particularly, "Search" is quite non-functional. Probably the idea is good but when it comes to implementation it is not that much successful.

• A thing that users dislike is that when they join "groups" and then remove themselves from Groups they may still get e-mails from the groups.

• There is a way from LinkedIn.com to let users not have a Group shown up on their profile. However, when the list doesn't show up, it appears as their groups are deleted.

Recommendation

Because in finding a job a networking has long been the best way, a site like LinkedIn.com is really helpful for job seekers. LinkedIn.com makes it much easier to get to know about possible job openings in favorite interest or field and to meet important contacts and. No wonder if many reviewer website like PCMag.com, Mashable.com, About.com and Lifehacker.com LinkedIn.com on their top lists their best job sites.

However, LinkedIn truly needs to improve their customer service, especially from charging its users for unused service in case of refund for unused subscription. If not, it seems that it only tries to milk each of its customers for as much money as possible. Some customers say that the premium services of Business from LinkedIn is a little bit of racket because the billing from it is recurring and it is extremely difficult for users to cancel both by following instruction and by contacting customer service.

What should be added to make the site better?

1. Give better instruction to customers about downgrading their account or canceling their subscription more easily as part of the convenience of customer service.

2. Provide career advice section in the website

3. For the option of not showing the groups the users have joined and their discussions, the web needs to display at least a brief listing instead of removing all from the display because the users cannot always remember their groups' name.