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If you’re like most college students, you probably know more about Facebook than you know about LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn is a social networking site that’s geared toward managing your work life connections and your career. People use it to network with others in their field and to find new jobs.

LinkedIn is growing like a weed! Techcrunchies.com reports that the site had 7.7 million users in June 2008 and a whopping 45 million by June 2009. Monthly page views of LinkedIn jumped from 114 million in 2008 to 331 million in the early part of 2009. Now, that’s growth! So, if you aren’t taking advantage of this site to help you with your job search coming out of college, you’re missing out.

LinkedIn works off of the idea of “six degrees of separation” — that everyone is only six degrees away from linking with everyone else. In other words, if you set up a profile on LinkedIn and invite others you know into your network, you’ll begin to create more and more connections. LinkedIn can search your address book in Microsoft Outlook or your e-mail list and tell you who on your list already has a LinkedIn profile. You may even find out that you already know someone at one of the companies where you want to work! But even if you don’t, you may still be able to establish a connection with someone who can help you make a connection.

Here’s how it works. Let’s say someone in your network knows someone in one of the companies you’re interested in, and you see the number “2” by the employee’s name on LinkedIn. This means that the employee is only one connection away from you — someone in your own network knows that employee directly. LinkedIn then allows you to ask that friend in your network to introduce you to the employee by sending an e-mail to that person through the LinkedIn system — and you’re hooked up!

lf you see a “3” next to the name of the person you want to meet, it means you’re two connections away from that person. So, you would need to request a couple of introductions in order to meet him or her. That means you could ask the friend in your network to set up an introduction with the other person connected to the employee. Then, hopefully, that person would be willing to set up an introduction for you directly with the employee in question. That’s a fair amount of work, of course, so you’d want to make sure that the connection will be worth it to you. But if the person works in the specific area at a company you really want to work for, go for it!

lf you’re only one connection away from someone you want to connect with (a “2”), it should be easy enough to get an introduction, and it’s worth giving it a shot. So, don’t be shy about making these connections. lf someone is unwilling to help you out with information about the company, that’s fine, but you may also meet a great ally who could help you get a job that’s even better than you’d hoped for.

LinkedIn is also a great source of company information. You may even discover some really great companies that you didn’t know about. For example, LinkedIn hosts hundreds of interest groups, and if you search for groups in your areas of interest, you should be able to find others in your targeted industry who are working for great companies. Let’s say your field is graphic design. You can search the “groups directory” on LinkedIn for “graphic design” and join a professional group to meet other designers. You can then ask group members about the companies they work for.

You can search for specific companies, a city you’re interested in, or for a specific industry. Make sure to search for old friends and classmates as well to find out if and where they’re working. Someone you knew in the fifth grade might be working at the company that’s number one on your list! You won’t know unless you look, so be sure to try.

When you search for one of your targeted companies on LinkedIn, you’ll find lists of its employees who have LinkedIn profiles. Look for people working in the division you’re interested in, for example, and check out their details. You’ll be amazed at how much information you’ll find there. Once you have a list of people on LinkedIn who work at a particular company, you’ll be able to see how connected we all truly are to one another. There’s a good chance that someone you’re linked to knows an employee at your company of interest.

Another great thing about LinkedIn is that people can write testimonials about you and post them directly to your profile. This means that the testimonials are proven to be objective. You can’t tamper with them (although you can decide not to add them to your profile if they say something you don’t want others to read). These testimonials also give you a chance to see what others are saying about employees at a company you’re interested in. Then, you can get a sense of the kind of people the company likes to hire.

When you review the profiles and testimonials, look for trends rather than just data about individuals. Does a particular company’s employees have things in common that could help you better understand what that company is all about? For example:

•Do the LinkedIn profiles sound similar — such as all conservative and formal or all pretty casual?

•What type and level of education do most of the employees have?

•Can you find profiles of recent college graduates that the company has hired?

•What kinds of things are mentioned most in the testimonials of the company’s employees? Do they tend to focus more on creativity … loyalty … integrity? This will give you an idea of what’s important to the company.