One of the most important things you can ever do is sign up for a free LinkedIn account. For those of you that don’t know what LinkedIn.com is, it’s essentially an online resume-centric social network. There are no images, and no pokes but there are testimonials (comments) and following in their cousin Facebooks footsteps LinkedIn will be releasing an API in the coming months.

So basically it works like this, you fill out your resume (profile) and in the process register like Facebook with your work email addresses to verify current employment … a slick feature. You can then search your network of contacts from your Gmail, Yahoo, AOL accounts, etc. and your friends and business contacts. They can then comment on your work performance at a certain job.

So that’s the basic stuff … but imagine what you can do with this. You can search for anyone from anywhere and find out who they know, where they worked etc. For research alone this is essential, but if you are on a job search this is the ONLY WAY to talk to these people. The user base of LinkedIn is so CEO-heavy it blows my mind, it’s like the executives use it and the employees are just now catching on.

http://www.linkedin.com/in/jessesaves

Check out how I setup my LinkedIn page, I have my email address as my name so that people can friend me and contact me without paying for membership or going to extra trouble. EVERY BIT COUNTS. This is your career we are playing for. Ask your friends to give you a testimonial. Add me if you like! I have 950 contacts on LinkedIn..

Tags: linkedin, social, Web 2.0