How to use LinkedIn to find a job

Here's some good advice about using LinkedIn effectively courtesy of the blog Attorney at Work:

Completing Your Profile

If you Google yourself (and if you don’t, you should), more than likely the first result will be your LinkedIn profile. If a potential employer or client Googles you, this is precisely what she’ll see, too. Time to complete your profile, right? Like it or not, it will frequently serve as your online professional resume, so make certain that it:

• Includes a current professional head shot. It really is worth a 1,000 words.
• Presents your background and credentials in the way that most represents where you want to go in your next job.
• Emphasizes what’s most likely to be influential in demonstrating your expertise.

If you don’t know what to include, study your friends’ and colleagues’ profiles. Model your profile after the best one that you find.

You can read the rest of the advice column, about populating your account, here.

(jbl).