Galery

1

Ivan Petkov

When it comes to business professional contacts are very important. I found out about this the hard way when years ago I started looking for a job for the first time and it turned out I didn’t have any. This is why I value my professional contacts and keep in touch with them, especially with people who are professionals in their field and I know that they are correct and can be relied on. 

Facebook is means by which you can maintain your professional contacts, but it is somehow very personal and mostly for fun, where people prefer to share "personal dramas" rather than to use it for business. LinkedIn on the other hand is a social network, which main purpose is to connect professionals, colleagues and companies. Recent studies show that it is second in in the U.S. and Europe, after the undisputed leader Facebook. In addition, LinkedIn became a public company and its listing on the stock exchange has led to several increases in its stock, which is also a sign of its popularity and the confidence of investors in the company. 

What do professional use this social network for? Marketing analysts from Lab42 give answers this question: 

- 61% of people in social networks prefer LinkedIn in order to share professional information 

- at least 70% of registered site use it several times a week (35% of them every day) 

- 90% find LinkedIn useful (percent for which many large sites can only dream about). The main reasons for this are because it is easier to find customers or potential candidates in remote areas. 

- The majority of users actively participate in at least one group or discussion 

- As might be expected, on managerial levels the main use of LinkedIn is to promote your own business, hiring staff and maintaining relationships with other companies in the sector. Ordinary users use the network primarily for job search and to keep in touch with friends and colleagues. 

Of course, where there are employers and professionals who willingly share information about themselves, inevitably work placement and recruitment emerge. Another important issue that causes us to ask ourselves is whether LinkedIn will replace traditional job sites or whether it will offer a new form of recruitment using the oldest practice - recommendation of a friend? It has happened to all of us to be looking for a person, who can help us get a certain job and the first thing we do is to ask our friends. Of course, this was all accomplished by personal meetings, phone or ICQ / Skype ... Now all we need to do is write a message which will be seen from all your friends and they can offer a suitable person if they know one. 

Businesses in turn, began to announce vacancies in their profiles and if the practice is successful, more and more of them will continue to try and find staff on LinkedIn. 

Another way to use the social network is the B2B model. Maybe not directly - via the official website of the company, but as the exchange of information between the average level management, as well as between people with freelancers and small business owners. There is nothing better than the information on profitable promotion that relates to my company to be able to find me while I am in the social network communicating with colleagues and friends! 

A few words about the business model of LinkedIn. Besides a free account, there are another 3 types of paid accounts that give expanded functionality. 

LinkedIn offers a job ad function and advertising in general in the social network. 

My personal impression is that the network provides sufficient resources in the settings of your account. The only disadvantage I would point out is that the network is available in only few languages, among which you cannot find Bulgarian. 

Here are a few tricks in LinkedIn, you might not know: 

1. Use Signal, to find news and information 

Signal is a new feature in Linkedin, which allows you to quickly and easily find updates within your contacts. The good news is that this feature has a filter that lets you narrow the scope of your search and search for a specific industry or location. 

2. Save contact information 

If you select My Connections you can see a list of all your contacts. At the bottom of the page you can find a very useful button called Export Connections. Pressing it you will get all your contact information in a convenient format to save in Microsoft Outlook, Yahoo! Mail or the service you use. 

3. Write a professional CV 

If you have already entered all information about yourself in Linkedin, you can easily and quickly write a professional CV. The tool called The Resume Builder will take all the necessary information from your form and will make it into a nice CV. You have several templates to choose from and you can enter your own corrections. 

4. Use and create groups