So, I looked up Matt's linked-in profile, as many people likely did after reading this. Let's see...

On linked in? Check. And the profile is well-customized too, with sections that link to.. hm, his Wordpress blog... and his SlideShare presentations, whatever those are... hm, fella sure seems to like to talk a lot.

Photo? Check. The small thumbnail, with that grin and hands in that pose, makes him look predatory. The large photo, with that grin, the thin-rimmed glasses, and the pose with the pen, says "faceless middle management" or "the guy who feels really, really bad about having to lay you off but this economy is tough right now".

What do your headline and summary say about you? Well, it's a pretty well written pitch for his consulting business, so can't fault him here. But the bottom of the summary quickly devolves into a blob of Search Engine Optimization trickery, repeats the word "career" something like a dozen times, and otherwise masks the flaws in his experience section - namely, that his career arc is covered entirely by occasional columns for the Times for a year, 8 years as a consultant and 13 years at one company. Hm.

How many connections? 500+. Ok, that's reasonable for someone who's been in the working world for years... oh dear, most of the top hits for "also viewed" or among the direct connections, are other career counselors. Or executive coaches. Or HR people. Hmmm.

What kind of notes do you write? Well, judging from his recommendations, the 'highly personalized, non-template' writing also follows a pretty standard format too: catchy, sometimes conversational opening sentence... continued story telling for another sentence or two, to prove they were actually in the same place at one point... a couple bullet points that rework or embellish one of the search terms in that person's profile... "if you're looking for X, this person provides X", ... "highly recommended".

So, indeed. One's LinkedIn profile says a lot about them. This one says, if you're looking for someone who has gotten the most out of their BA in communications, here's a top-notch choice! Highly recommended.

And yes, this comment also says something about me. It's not flattering, I know.

Seriously, Mr. Youngquist. You may want to reassess how you present yourself to the world, in between the MMA bouts, ultimate frisbee and "critical thinking" ("critical thinking" as an interest / pastime? do you know how that comes across?). There's professional, and then there's... let's be kind and say "slick" or "overly polished".

The above comment is very interesting, and as always, it's awfully hard to debate these kinds of issues with folks who choose to remain anonymous. On one hand, I'm actually quite impressed with the writing skills and powers of analysis of the person who picked apart my own profile. In fact, I may even change a few things, based on their obsevations. So I'll tip my cap at that part of the analysis. At the same time, there seems to be one major difference between us. I devote a great many, many hours of my life writing, speaking, and blogging in a constructive attempt to help people achieve greater career success and learn how to compete in today's job market more effectively. And this person, for whatever reason, chose to devote their considerable powers of intellect to a totally destructive purpose -- to try and tear somebody down. I'm sorry, LinkedIn In commenter, but it seems we have a very different worldview...

I will agree that your photo with the pen looks slightly rediculous... Like the rest of your profile though - tons of stuff on it though. Maybe a little too much stuff.

The lack of information on someone's LinkedIn account, or the lack of a LinkedIn account altogether, might simply mean that the individual has a secure position and isn't desperately seeking work or another job. It could also mean that the individual has actual personal relationships with those with whom another job can be had.

James/Dan: Thanks for your constructive input on the topic at hand -- and while I'm a bit surprised my photo was that much a turn-off, since I've received lots of positive comments on it over the years, I hope you understand that I'm merely trying to help folks realize that a well-constructed and well-thought-out LinkedIn profile is a very important element to career success these days, for better or worse. Truly, most people have just slapped something up there without thinking much about it, but when they take the steps to deck it out properly they're bound to increase the number of inquiries they receive from employers and recruiters. And I agree, Dan, that LinkedIn may be less of a priority for those who aren't seeking work at the moment and/or who have a strong network of people they associate with "offline" to count on. Then again, having seen so many people get laid off over the years when they least expected it, and thought their job was secure, it still seems to me to be a wise insurance policy for somebody to take this small step to improve their employment marketability in today's world. That's my two cents, at least, based on helping people with this process day in and day out for quite a few years. Doesn't mean people have to fully agree with me, of course. I get that. Again, thanks for chiming in...

Not on LinkedIn. Not on Facebook. Not on Twitter.

Many of us continue to value, guard, and attempt to maintain our (relative) privacy, both on- and off-line.

That makes us neither hermits, nor wealthy.

And if one's value of one's privacy makes one 'behind the times,' then so be it.

It however could alternatively mean that we refuse to expose ourselves so freely and openly to the world.

That the rest of you are clearly comfortable with this universal exposure greatly disturbs the rest of us.

I am an unemployed tech professional. Am I likely missing contacts by refusing to linkin? Quite likely.

Is my privacy worth the loss? Absolutely!

Jesus people lighten up. This guy's got it dead right. I work for one of the top staffing companies in Seattle and we use linkedin constantly as a tool for finding and evaluating candidates. Its not the only thing we consider but if we see a profile that's not very complete or very professional it does make a difference. So just take a second to put some appropriate stuff on there and get in all the keywords for your field. Guess some haters just gonna hate, though.

Agreed with Antonio. Linkedin offers recruiters another way of expanding the talent pool and finding candidates that are not in search of a new gig, but may consider if a recruiter contacts them. I'm starting to see more 'apply with Linkedin' requests. Great article Matt. Ignore the grumpy troll.

Jon: Fair enough. It sounds like you've carefully weighed the tradeoffs and made a decision not to participate in social media, due to the privacy issues involved. And for the record, I'm not a huge technology evangelist, myself, who feels everybody should be living their lives out loud on the Internet. I use Facebook and Twitter only sparingly, for example, out of similar concerns. But when it comes to LinkedIn, I've never heard of a single case where somebody got burned using the system in a negative way -- and I know hundreds of people who have generated legitimate job leads, interviews, and business opportunities using the system. So on balance, it's hard not to recommend it to the people reading this part of the paper seeking help finding new employment. If you don't feel the pros/cons are worth it, however, that's totally your call. Best of luck with your search...

Wow. I read this article and got the impression that if you're not on LinkedIn the way the author recommends, then you're purposefully committing career suicide. I am on Facebook and thoroughly enjoy it. But LinkedIn? I signed up and have some connections, but none of my friends seem to use for anything else except a bragging notch of 'See how many connections I have!' I guess if you don't join a bunch of LinkedIn groups, then your account just sits without much going on. I could care less, and I'm not committing career suicide. I have a good job, a good career, and have never found LinkedIn useful.

The problem I have with this article is that the author offers a generalized common sense type opinion and casts that as Gospel guidelines.

I know several who follow this dogmatic advice and do not succeed and I also know several folks who follow exactly the opposite of this and succeed nevertheless. The fact of the matter is that there isn't just one way to market oneself.

Now, I am not sure why the author feels that he cannot debate an issue with someone who is anonymous. I think he should be thick skinned enough to not feel 'torn down' when when someone analyses his profile in line with the dogmatic advice that was handed out.

ePaymentsNut: Nah, I'm under no illusions I'm dispensing Gospel. It's just advice, based on what I'm seeing work (or not work) out of the hundreds of job seekers I work with each year. People can choose to take my tips or leave them -- and sure, there are probably plenty of people who will continue to enjoy wonderfully fulfilling careers without joining LinkedIn or any other social media site. Just like somebody could probably get by in life without a cell phone, credit cards, or e-mail, if they really tried and felt such things were important.

But if you ask me if the average professional, on balance, stands to benefit from maintaining a well-optimized presence on LinkedIn, the answer is an unqualified "yes". I have yet to hear a compelling argument (aside from the one "I don't trust the privacy of any social media sites" opinion shared above, which I disagree with, but respect) as to why any career-minded professional WOULDN'T use the tool, when a relatively modest investment of time stands to yield serious career and networking benefits for many years to come.

And as for my willingness to debate people on the usefulness of LinkedIn, or the advice dispensed in any of my articles, I'm all for it. I'd love, love, love to respond to any tough questions or serious counterarguments about the points I'm making -- and would gladly concede ground and admit I'm wrong if that turns out to be the case. But it seems that so many people who comment on websites can't resist peppering their arguments with personal insults, for some odd reason. And when that happens, it seems rather pointless to engage them and try to win them over, which I hope you can appreciate. I think we're beyond the stage of respectful debate and reasonable disagreement at that point.

Rest assured, though, if you or anybody else out there wants to hold my feet to fire and press me further on WHY I feel LinkedIn is so incredibly vital to career success today -- or wants to point out where I'm wrong in a constructive and open-minded way -- I'd welcome the discussion in a heartbeat, either online or offline. No joke. Let's hash things out and try to help some people!

Matt,

Thanks for taking the time to explain your viewpoint. Your article appears more balanced in conjunction with the 12 comments that follow. Without them, I am afraid it sounds like an advertisement that you were paid to do.

Basically the overarching assertion in your article is that not focusing on building up an individual brand on a particular site is huge lost opportunity. A single instance of the converse disproves your assertion. This is not a question of semantics. You agreed that people can have fulfilling careers without joining linkedin.

Surely these glorified bulletin board platforms are a transient phenomenon. What happens when they loose their significance ? They are merely brand and can be duplicated very easily without much IT effort. What happens if they go belly up if/when they are unable to monetize their platform ? If they decide to charge a small fee, surely most users will exit in a heartbeat and go to a competitor.

On personal note, linkedin does indeed work exceedingly well in my domain of work, my profile is www.linkedin.com/in/paymentsnut. I clearly have to put some work into it...

Thanks for your openness to listen to the counter viewpoints.

Regards

ePaymentsNut: Thanks for taking my comments in stride -- and in case anybody out there is wondering, I don't have any formal affiliation with LinkedIn whatsoever. In fact, as much as I obviously value certain aspects of the site, I take the LinkedIn folks to task constantly in my own corporate blog for the dumb decisions I think they've made over the years in terms of certain feature changes and such.

So no, I'm not promoting LinkedIn out of any ulterior motive. I just have found it to be the single most useful job hunting tool invented to date, having studied the Internet career and networking space for a living since the mid-nineties. It's the one that seems to generate the best results when used properly. And frankly, many people just "don't know what they don't know" in terms of using the site -- which is why they haven't gotten good results with it. I'm not suggesting this is the case with you, necessarily, but in training after training class I hold each year, all over town, I find most people (including folks who have had accounts on LinkedIn for years) have almost no real grasp of the power of the system. They're always amazed when I walk them through specific examples of how it can be used to generate job leads, research careers, drive warm hiring referrals, and the like. Facebook isn't even in the same league when it comes to business-related networking, which, as most people realize, accounts for the majority of all hiring today.

As for your assertion that a single case of somebody experiencing career success without using LinkedIn disproves my advice, I'll be honest, I don't quite follow your logic. To me, that's like saying that if a few people (and there are some out there) have gotten jobs without ever using the Internet or needing a resume, nobody else should bother doing these things, either. Why would anybody in search of new employment in today's world choose not to use an available tool that's free and would greatly increase their odds?

Help me out -- what am I missing here?

This is a good reminder for me to update my LinkedIn account. I agree that LinkedIn can be a very powerful tool.

I truly dislike Social Media or I guess in this case Professional Media... So although it disappoints me to say, I think the article is true- sad, but true.

Many of my co-workers are well-seasoned professionals and hold a high level of disdain for social media and LinkedIn. Because of this, they do not have LinkedIn accounts. This creates an interesting scenario, because if I were to overcome my dislike for LinkedIn and update my account I still would be unable to add many "connections". I'm curious, would this "lack of connections" count against me from a recruiter's standpoint?

I can see why LinkedIn is useful for recruiters, but I think it creates more burden for a job seeker. I'm sure you can make an argument that LinkedIn makes it easier for job seekers to search for jobs etc. But in my opinion, the benefits don't outweigh the burden. LinkedIn creates yet another "image" that we- as job seekers- must keep-up.

Maybe I need to take a class about LinkedIn that the author mentioned to see more of the benefits of LinkedIn... but I don't see them.

Just as an FYI, I disdain Facebook and do not participate in almost all social media "worlds," but I do have a LinkedIn account I've spent considerable time developing. When I was laid off three years ago I was unemployed for almost a year.

Right when I began considering giving up trying to get a job in my field and conceded I was going to have to compromise on he position and $, a recruiter found me, arranged an interview, and I was hired-- they found me on LinkedIn.

This, my friends, is all I need to know about LinkedIn.

Good luck finding your new gig, I mean that.

LinkedIn is not what it is intended to be or what it set out to be. I have small connections, who cares. I rarely get on LinkedIn anymore because it just does not work. And let me tell you some of my small connections are very powerful