A lot of people ask me what the hell LinkedIn is actually good for. For you out there who’s not familiar with LinkedIn it’s an online network of more than 13 million experienced professionals from around the world, representing 150 industries.

Well, I could probably come up with a few more useful things but it’s primary function to me is that it really helps me locate and eventually hire some amazingly talented colleagues.

The procedure is straight forward.

1. Click the “People” tab
2. Type in your search criteria e.g. “C# .NET SQL2005″ and select the appropriate “Industry” & “Location”
3. Locate the right people among the search results and choose “Send InMail”

4. Select “Career opportunity” and write a letter of introduction:

This is how I’ve recruited half of my last 10 colleagues: Very talented people who were not actively looking for a job change. So I guess it works. This is my statistics the last year or so:

Note! Remember only to contact people through LinkedIn who’s “interested in career opportunities” - a user profile setting which per default is set to “interested …”. If you begin to use LinkedIn a lot for this specific purpose then you’ll probably need to upgrade to a PRO account - which includes 200 “InMails per month”.

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