Chemists: What Has LinkedIn Done For You Lately?
Developing a network of contacts is often cited as career advice to chemists. Sometimes, LinkedIn is suggested as a good service for doing so.
A recent post describing why one user quit LinkedIn altogether got me thinking about how useful this service is in practice. An older D-F post talked about some problems with LinkedIn forums - specifically, the limitations of investing time and effort on closed discussion forums with a limited audience.
Given the currently underperforming chemistry job market, and the often-cited connection between LinkedIn and finding a job, it seems reasonable to ask chemists - what has LinkedIn done for you lately?
What better way to ask than with that other social media site, Twitter. Responses have so far been mixed. Here's a sample:
@rapodaca Some of the comp chem groups have quite active discussions
— Jan Jensen (@janhjensen) January 7, 2013
@rapodaca As an entry level scientist, it's awesome. I can see how it can get annoying, if you're so great the recruiters are after you. :)
— onesleepynerd (@onesleepynerd) January 7, 2013
@rapodaca I like LinkedIn, but it lacks a Reddit-like mod structure. The discussion groups are for crap.
— Chemjobber (@Chemjobber) January 7, 2013
@rapodaca Activity prompted by a connection's recent activity feed started a chain of events which led to me getting a job. Whoop!
— Michelle McKinney (@skuldintape) January 7, 2013
@rapodaca @chemjobber Don't know really, am present but not using it much for science
— Marcel Swart (Eng.) (@Marcel_Swart) January 7, 2013
@rapodaca I found several good collaborations using it, discussions sometimes useful (very rare), job search was OK. But mostly it is spam
— Vladimir Chupakhin (@chupvl) January 8, 2013
If you've successfully used LinkedIn to land a chemistry position or solve a technical problem you faced in your job, how did you do it? If another service or approach gave better results, which one did you use and how?