Michelle Magoffin

I know this because I received an email last week from the co-founder of LinkedIn thanking me for being among the first million members. (My member number is in the 600,000 range. I think I joined LinkedIn in 2003.) LinkedIn now has over 100 million members. I was pleased to see this email on a couple of levels. One, I am proud that I am an early adopter. Two, I thought it was a nice gesture from LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has been invaluable. I have never been a great in-person networker. It doesn’t come naturally to me. What does come naturally is anything having to do with the internet, so when LinkedIn moved offline networking online, there was finally a way I could participate comfortably. I have a network of nearly 800 people on LinkedIn. Close to 70% of them are or were coworkers of mine. (I have worked for large companies, and turnover is high in the internet industry.) The rest are people I have worked with in a professional capacity, people I have met at conferences, friends, and recruiters. (I almost always accept requests from recruiters.)

Through the years, LinkedIn has proven to be an accurate barometer for the state of the market. When the market is improving, I get more calls and emails from recruiters who find me on LinkedIn. When the market starts to tank, the calls and emails dry up. It’s like an early warning system. When I recently started my search for a job in Austin, Texas, LinkedIn was the first place I turned. I joined LinkedIn Groups in Austin. I made new contacts through those groups. I searched my existing contacts for second and third degree connections at companies I’m targeting in Austin. I reached out to connections in other ways, as well.

I’m a fan of LinkedIn and I am grateful for what it has done for me. Are we connected?