Using LinkedIn for Work
For really the first time ever, I am using LinkedIn to help me find business contacts. I’m in the midst of doing some product research.
It’s an interesting experience. If you are a friend of mine and you have a large list of contacts within LinkedIn, it is highly likely that I will be bugging you in the near future.
I have noticed a few things about LinkedIn during this process.
- First, I have almost no incentive to directly use LinkedIn’s email introduction tools. The problem is that they are totally impersonal. Instead, I search for people ordered by degrees of separation. I only try to contact the people who are two degrees away from me. I find out how can introduce me to the business contact that I am interested in, and I email that person directly.
“On LinkedIn you have James Brown listed as a contact. I was wondering if you might be able to introduce me to him. I would like to….“
- Second, LinkedIn does not make it easy for me to conduct this kind of search. They have no facility to search the database for people who are connected to me through a given individual and who match a given search criteria.
- Third, the LinkedIn InMail feature is crazy expensive. $200 / month to be able to directly “InMail” only 50 people per month.
- Fourth, because LinkedIn does not have an API, there are all sorts of obvious integrations that would make me more productive, but don’t yet exist. Why isn’t gmail hooked up with LinkedIn?
For the most part, I agree with these observations. But nevertheless I’m a fan of LinkedIn: I’ve been “located” by former colleagues through LinkedIn, and I don’t believe they would have found me otherwise. Also, a small item in your review needs some clarification: You’re right that the standard email introduction tools are impersonal — but you can customize the messages; I think they do a good job of tracking who’s been invited, who already responded, etc.
[…] innovation Creators » Using LinkedIn for Work The jury’s still out but it’s not looking for LinkedIn, good question on the GMail link - I for one am really waiting for that (tags: linkedin google productivity research) […]
I signed up for the $20/month plan and sent a few emails, but not a single response. The emails stay inside of LinkedIn, so only active users will even see them. Maybe some stats about how often the target logs in would be useful before I go to the trouble?
LinkedIn is a closed system. They have enough critical mass, they don’t need to be.
I am in agreement with Tracy. The most value is by keeping in touch with former colleagues, that I might not otherwise hear from as oftern as I do if they are in LinkedIn.
When I receive the LinkedIn updates I find them very helpful.
As anyone used LinkedIn successfully to find new hires?
Great points Rod. With Facebook opening up a developer API recently, LinkedIn will be forced to do this too if they want to remain competitive.