As with Facebook, LinkedIn benefits the user who spends time adding contacts and beefing up their profile. The power, as with all social media, is in the network. By adding, for example, a previous employer, you are included in a list of all former employees of that institution.
LinkedIn users are particularly encouraged to populate their profile with as much detail as possible: apart from their personal data (including a photo), their education, their employers, and their roles. They are then encouraged to populate their LinkedIn contacts database by allowing the site to mine their existing email address books (either by providing a password to their webmail accounts, or by uploading their address book as files.) Thus, a new arrival on LinkedIn can quickly acquire contacts by matching those already in their address books elsewhere. They are also encouraged to “invite” those in their address books but not yet on LinkedIn to sign up, but this is not considered good practice by many who resent the invites. Indeed, those already on LinkedIn must still accept an invitation to connect. If the request to connect is ignored or rejected, that person is not added to the originator’s contact list. LinkedIn works primarily by email addresses: If you know someone’s email address, and that email address is registered in their profile, then an invitation to connect is relatively simple to make. Another way is to connect by asserting some collaboration in the past, citing one of the positions you have listed in your employment history.
