I joined it, set up a profile, "connected" with some people I know professionally, and...that's it.

A waste of time, if you ask me.

It is becoming a very powerful networking career opportunity for both those seeking jobs and for those in HR targeting specific candidates with specific backgrounds for jobs.

JK!

I made sure the company I work for set up a corporate profile because a lot of consultants in our sector use it to look for employment opportunities. It's a relatively inexpensive way to raise profiles for individuals and businesses.

Now it's going FacebookMySpaceGoogle+.

Ugh.

at LinkedIn. The problem is that it never amounted to anything of consequence! People just show off the size of their network, but it means nothing.

Another race to the bottom.

I have never understood Linked In, and yet I have a profile, which, as far as I can tell, is pretty much meaningless. If you're a young professional of sorts, maybe it makes sense, if your professional colleagues and prospective employers use it to verify that you are who you say you are and have the contacts you say you do. Other than that, I don't see that point.

That said, assuming there is a point, it was founded on the basis of being a networking group of professionals. Adding high school and college students sort of detracts from the professional networking aspect of the site, making it no different from Facebook.

they will naturally connect with one another but also connect with those that have established careers as they look for internships, jobs, or even just informational interviews. A young business student approached me on LinkedIn for that very purpose.

Perhaps introducing them to this dynamic of the web will encourage them to be a bit more circumspect in what they post throughout their other social media outlets as well. Once they understand how social media can affect you positively and negatively regarding career prospects.

Linked In wants you to give them your information and then they sell access to your profile to their subscribers, but they don't give you anything in return for doing so. I give you something, you give me something; fail to do that and why would I give you anything to begin with.

when you can find previous colleagues you kind of forgot about and reconnect with them in a mutually beneficial way--that is gold. On top of that, I have seen positions too numerous to even try to recount that I would not have found through other job search methods.

Here's another thing....by doing a great job of matching great opportunities to people who have filled out their profile completely, it can cause employers to try harder to retain their employees when they know said employees can move on to better positions with ease.

The groups section provides great information on very targeted areas of information I care about.

And the endorsement aspect helps a person you connect up with (either for a job or otherwise) see that a wide swath of your connections endorse you for specific skills which goes a long way toward adding to any professional references you may give.

Again you give your information to linked in, but then they force you to pay $50 per month to be able to get any use out of the site. You can reconnect, network, and all that just as easy via facebook, and not have to pay a dime.

and i have no idea what premium membership gets you.

as I can tell, the only outcome is a flood of Link requests from former students and random people I've met at conferences. I can sense that LI would be a tool for collaboration, but I have better and more focused tools for that. Likewise for discussion, and for pushing out information. My sense of LinkedIn when I first heard about it was that it was aimed at people in faster-paced and more fluid industries - I don't see that it has much value outside that niche (with the caveat that I'm a bit of a fudd, I don't see great value in an awful lot of popular things )...

It never actually amounted to anything; it certainly wasn't the big find-a-job networking site I thought it would be, nothing much more than the same H1B "recruiters" pushing the same (probably non-existent) H1B "opportunities" over and and over.

And as far as having any actual professional, technical discussions--what I had really hoped for when I signed up--that simply does not happen.