The document discusses LinkedIn as a powerful professional networking tool, emphasizing its extensive user base, organization features, and the importance of maintaining a current profile. It provides practical tips for users, including how to effectively leverage LinkedIn for personal networking, job searching, and accessing company data. Additionally, it outlines how journalists can utilize LinkedIn discreetly for research and networking purposes.

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Robin J Phillips
Digital Director,
The Reynolds Center for Business Journalism

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Biggest Rolodex EVER!
 150 million users
 200 countries
 Professional focus
 Updated by users
 Very portable
 Carry past colleagues with you
 Sorted by company, industry,
geography
 Updated by users

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LinkedIn highlights
 Founded in 2003
 Alexa ranks LinkedIn.com No. 12 site in world, No. 9 in U.S.
 Becoming more social - FB and Twitter connections
 Supports groups – more than 1 million of them
 May 2011 IPO, opening price jump from $45 to $122.70 ($93.05 a
week ago)
 Rolled out an “Apply with LinkedIn” feature in November
 BBC traffic from LinkedIn increased tenfold January to June 2011
 Huge database for journalists to dig into

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Simple tips
 Maintain a current profile (even if you’re not looking for a job)
 Complete your profile & have at least 50 connections
 Don’t use a cut-and-paste of your resume
 Make your profile public & give it a custom URL
 Recommend people (anyone you’d write a reference for IRL)
 But avoid recommendation “swapping”
 Join groups, discussion boards, eavesdrop and get involved
 Keep non-professional SM accounts separate from LinkedIn

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Using LinkedIn as a
(well-organized)
database
intuitive

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What we’ll talk about today
 LinkedIn as a database  Searching people at
companies
 Personal use
 Finding current employees
 Groups
 Finding former employees
 Jobs
 Digging into company data
 Skills
 How to search in stealth mode
 Searching for people

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Personal use – networking, bragging

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Groups – belong to or search
 Alumni
 Corporate
 Professional
 Conference
 Networking
 Non-profits
 … other

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Group you should join

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Groups – conversations, story ideas

18. + Jobs – finding, tracking

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Skills – yours and theirs

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Skills - looking for an expert
Searching for
skills in profile

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People search, company

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Narrowing
the field

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Advanced search

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Employees
Drill
deeper

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Drill deeper

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Past employees

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Company search

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Company search

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Insight Statistics: Liz Claiborne

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Company search: HSBC

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Company search: HSBC

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Company search: HSBC

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HSBC Financial Services

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HSBC Financial Services

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HSBC Financial Services

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HSBC Financial Services

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HSBC Financial Services

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HSBC Financial Services

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Staff with new titles

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top
Full
page
insightful
statistics
Netflix
bottom

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Past and future employers

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Past and future employers

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Chegg

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Beats
Retail

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Industries
real estate

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Search in stealth mode
As a journalist, you may not want people to know that you're
following a company (or look for a job). If you want to follow
companies in stealth mode, here's what you do:
1. Hover over your name in the top right hand corner of LinkedIn
2. Click "Settings" when it appears in the drop down menu.
3. On the next page, under, "Privacy Controls," you should see a
link that says, "Turn on/off your activity broadcasts." Click that
link.
4. Uncheck the box next to, "Let people know when you change
your profile, make recommendations, or follow companies.”

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Your LinkedIn guru
 Follow Krista Canfield and  Former reporter who thinks
attend one of her sessions. like a journalist

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What you learned today
 LinkedIn as a database  Searching people at
companies
 Personal use
 Finding current employees
 Groups
 Finding former employees
 Jobs
 Digging into company data
 Skills
 How to search in stealth mode
 Searching for people
Slides are in handouts or send Robin.Phillips@businessjournalism.org
me a note