Hacker News Reader

Comment by Lewisham | Hacker News Reader

LinkedIn, at its core, is very simple: its a replacement for the big Rolodex you see in 80s movies. Instead of trying to keep a network together using business cards, you use LinkedIn.

You lean on your network when you need something from it: a contact, a new job, help finding people for a job you need to fill.

LinkedIn does this very well because the people using it all understand this. It's not supposed to be Facebook. It's OK to not check in on it or the people you're connected to for a year. You just have a social contract that when someone does need you, you scratch their back, and you will have you back scratched karmicly in the future.

If you don't "get it", you're expecting it to do something it doesn't. You probably expect Facebook for business.

View on HN

Totally agree - that's exactly what LinkedIn is - It is a replacement for the Rolodex with a few key advantages.

1. People keep their email addresses reasonably up to date, so I can contact them if they change their info.

2. Somewhat useful - people keep their jobs/companies they are working for up to date.

3. If someone introduces themselves to me in a business context, one of the first steps we take is to establish a relationship on linked in. That immediately gives me insight into their background, and, some clues (but no guarantees) as to their legitimacy. In particular, 95% of the time we're only two-hops away, and more than 50% of the time we know somebody in common - so I can quickly drop a line to someone I trust personally and get the inside scoop on this new associate of mine.

Anybody who is trying to use Linked In for more than a Rolodex is missing the point. It really is nothing more.

Also, (And I'm not sure if this is just me) - I have about 300 or so facebook friends, and about 400 Linked-In contacts, and, with maybe a half-dozen exceptions - there is no intersection between the two sets. I don't share pictures, wall-history, or personal updates with business colleagues, and, I have no desire to pollute my linkded in rolodex with every aunt, uncle, niece, nephew, ex-girlfriend that I've acquired in the last 10 years.

Among people I know, there's much more overlap, but probably because there's much more overlap IRL as well, so it's not clear who should go in the "personal" versus "work" buckets. If your circle of friends includes a half-dozen people from the office, and you know their spouses and kids and go out together regularly, which group are they in?

If we would go out regularly regardless of the fact that we work together, then they would be the exceptions. The difference is that a lot (most?) of the "Social" engagements I have with coworkers are clearly work related. Those dinners, weekend picnics, and snowboarding weekends I have with them are business/work related, not something I would have likely done if I had never worked with them.

Ergo, they stay in my linkedin compartment.

Also notifies you when one of your former colleagues changes jobs.

I agree the original poster doesn't really seem to get what LinkedIn is for. It sounds like he might be looking for something like the app I just launched about an hour ago after 2 months working on getting it to MVP stage. It does have a neat way of saying that you're a freelancer, working for yourself and not a company. It also integrates with HN, Github and StackOverflow. It's really more of a résumé platform than a rolladex platform like LinkedIn. Though you can import work and education experience using the LinkedIn importer.

It's 6.54am and I haven't been to bed yet. I promised myself I'd get the first version out for private beta this weekend. Anyway check out my launch post if you are interested:

http://www.mightycv.com/86lxv6vi

This post also includes a limited time private beta invite code. Check it out if you want a early chance to play with Mighty CV. Must sleeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep now......

We're currently looking for a junior Drupal developer and decided to leverage LinkedIn to find someone local (Geelong, VIC AUS if anyone is interested). It wasn't helpful at all, which is frustrating because I'm sure there are plenty of people on LinkedIn who'd want the job. I guess you're right that we expected it to be something that it's not.

Incredibly specific use case.

Population of Geelong = 300,000. Percentage of population who are Drupal developers = xx%. Total Linkedin users worldwide = 11 million.

It's OK to not check in on it or the people you're connected to for a year.

In the context of Facebook not being LinkedIn, you're correct. But for professional relationships, it is not okay to NOT check in on your contacts and see how their doing. Otherwise what's the point as listing them as someone you know if you're not going to bother following up on them, their company or their career? Do you even care?

These bridges are vital for every professional that cares to build them, and if you're not going to maintain it, ultimately it's your fault when a recruiter tries to cross that bridge only to fall through a weak plank when that contact goes "Who?"

It's not what you know. It's not who you know. It's who knows you.

a year isnt that long in a lot of business contexts. a year is quite a while in personal contexts.

I think in the past, this was probably true. My Dad, who had the Rolodex, told me that once a year he would go through and try and call everyone in the Rolodex. He did this in order to:

a) Make sure he had the right contact information (and contact within a reasonable amount of time so that if they left the company, he could get the new information) b) Make sure the other party still had his contact details/didn't forget him

LinkedIn largely removes the need for both: if a contact changes his/her information, you already have access to those new details. Other parties can't really "forget" you, because the connection stays there. As mentioned elsewhere, building the network helps the mechanical filters work. Rather than trying to remember the specifics about a person "I wonder if that Jeff bloke knows this Dave guy, because I remember Jeff had dealings with Dave's company", you simply type in "Who knows Dave" and it'll tell you. The specifics you previously needed aren't needed anymore.

I've found it's OK to get introductions through people you met once at a conference for 20 minutes. They can't vouch for you, but they'll say "He was a good enough guy for me to add him to LinkedIn, so you should probably chat."

But you're right, if you want them to come to you, you'll have to work that network more aggressively and in a more timely manner. I lean on mine when I need to, which is working OK so far.

Great points.

I suppose what I did a poor job of emphasizing (after reading your comment) was that networking beyond LinkedIn and trying to establish relationships. Perhaps I'm a bit more cold about who I connect with on LinkedIn, because in a way I see it as an extension of my social consciousness when people can just reach out and ask to join that circle.

And that's not to call myself old fashioned or lash out against the worthiness of something like a digital Rolodex; what I am saying however is that if it's worth your time to go through and connect with people on LinkedIn, it should also be worth your time to find out if these are the people you can derive some sort of social bounty from as well. Needlessly padding your connections count is about as non-advantageous as needlessly padding your twitter count.

However this opinion is purely relative, and contains large amounts of imperative perspective based on a few bad experiences.

Is it considered acceptable to offer a connection to one of your employer's customers if you have spoken with them personally (but don't work in sales etc)?

In certain contexts, this happens frequently. However, I know that some firms ask their employees not to do this as it gives competitive intelligence information away. Your profile shows who you work for, and if you have it enabled, LinkedIn will announce that you just connected to someone at ... Enron ... so there is a good chance that your company has a working relationship with Enron.

Sure my colleagues and I do this all the time. We announce every new customer with a press release so we're not giving away any secrets that way.

If it were limited to being rolodex then probably I would get it. But the public resumes, the recommendations etc make the people using it look phoney somehow.

A genuine question to people here who do hiring: Do you really use the resume and referrals to shortlist a candidate? I don't.

> Do you really use the resume and referrals to shortlist a candidate? I don't.

LinkedIn is one way to build an initial list, especially if you vet folks first through your mutual contacts.

Instead of trying to ask all the folks who you trust "I'm looking for {specific}, can you help?", LinkedIn lets you mechanically look for folks who might satisfy {specific} and are connected to folks who you "trust".

The LinkedIn list is probably a bit big, but it's a mechanical filter, so you don't miss someone because you didn't contact the right people or they didn't remember someone when you did.

That's a much better starting list before you make a single contact. And, your contacts are far more focussed. Instead of "do you know?", it's "what can you tell me about {person}?"

Reply on news.ycombinator.com