[nfbwatlk] Re LinkedIn

[Elizabeth Rene]

LinkedIn is a highly reputable, professionally oriented networking tool of long standing, used for finding employment, career advancement, and the development of professional resources and business contacts.
Companies and nonprofit organizations showcase themselves on LinkedIn, too, to gain public visibility and to highlight their products and causes.
This website is geared for a serious folks who want to accomplish serious goals, and is not merely a social medium for chat. An invitation to join LinkedIn is an offer to share one's own contacts with the invitee as well as a request to share the invitees contacts.
A person who joins LinkedIn builds a profile on the website in the same way as one creates a resume,x except that LinkedIn allows one to advertise specific skills and  to ask others in his or her network to endorse those skills as genuine. In that way, not only does one have a resume, but one has references built-in.
While the standard resume can only be one or two pages long, LinkedIn lets you be more detailed and specific, lets you write about your goals and about what you are seeking, and lets you develop a webpage of your own that can be referenced on your paper resume. Members of LinkedIn can email one another, so that if someone in your network knows of a job you might like, or wants to hire you, they can tell you about it.
Because everyone in one's network shares his or her profile, people can contact one another based on shared interests and specialties held in common.
If Lincton is given access to your contact list, it will tell you who on your contact list is already a member of LinkedIn, and you can elect to contact them one by one (selectively), or as a group. Contacts who don't belong to LinkedIn can be invited individually to join. Because individual choices are an option, people don't have to worry about listserv sites being invited unless they have clicked the "invite all" button.
There is a search option at the top of the page that lets the person look for people he or she knows to see if they belong to LinkedIn. Once an acquaintance on LinkedIn is found, and invitation can be sent to connect.
No one has to accept anyone else's invitations.
People building their profiles on LinkedIn can post a photo as well, so that others connecting with them can associate their  name with their face.
I think that blind people looking for work should put themselves on LinkedIn, so that their skills and interests can be showcased to people they might otherwise never meet. The Nfb should join too, as an organization, to show other individuals, companies, and nonprofits what we are about.
The mobile app for iPhone isn't the most accessible thing in the world, but the more of us who use it, the more sway we would have with LinkedIn to improve their utility.
I like LinkedIn, and feel it has more credibility then sites such as monster.com for example, because LinkedIn members are looking for one another based on mutuality of acquaintance and commonality of interest, whereas someone posting a resume to monster.com is sending a resume out into the cold to be glanced at by strangers.
Networking, whether in person or online, is a jobseeking skill we could all benefit from. I'm told that most work is found that way these days.
So, if someone invites me to  connect with them on LinkedIn, I take that as a gesture of respect and admiration, an indication that they see me as a woman of substance, someone with skills and professional contacts beneficial to them.

Elizabeth 
 
Elizabeth M René 
Attorney at Law 
WSBA #10710
rene0373 at gmail.com