Yesterday, LinkedIn announced 100 million registered members.  This achievement is a significant milestone.

For six months in 2010, I stopped using LinkedIn.  Even though it centralized my professional contacts and elevated my online search engine optimization (SEO) visibility, I thought LinkedIn was heading towards irrelevance like MySpace or Friendster (e.g., another also-ran lacking continuous innovation).

But, LinkedIn Labs introduced several innovative products in the past 12 months.  Here are three (3) products I think business professionals may find useful in their professional networking and career progression:

 

 

1. LinkedIn Labs Resume Builder

 

 

 

My Favorite LinkedIn Product.  If you’re looking for easy automation to build a professional-looking resume, look no further.  Resume Builder helped me create two (2) resume formats in less than an hour. 

Fill Out Your LinkedIn Profile With as Much Detail as Possible.  Resume Builder works only as well as the data supplied in your LinkedIn Profile.  Therefore, a 100% completed profile with detailed bullet points for all past and current jobs works best.

If you don’t completely fill out your LinkedIn Profile, you’ll lose the opportunity to fully leverage this valuable and time-saving capability.

The Resume Manager Provides 12 Resume Templates Plus the Option to Create a Public/Private Link to Your Resume.  I created two (2) resumes using the Executive and Clean Template formats.  Here’s what a resume looks like in the Executive Template: http://resume.linkedinlabs.com/979ya9sl

2. LinkedIn Today

 

Customized News Relevant Powered by Your LinkedIn Social Graph.  The LinkedIn Today algorithm aggregates customized, news feeds based on your industry focus, connections, interests, and other relevant data  provided in your LinkedIn Profile.  It’s an “executive newspaper” categorized by your profile’s industries / interests.

The “executive newspaper” looks great (imagine reading something like this on an iPad2). It’s a great way to start your morning by reading the latest business news.  I’ve been using LinkedIn Today since its introduction, and I always find important, work-related information or additional content inspiring future blog posts.   

3. LinkedIn Maps

 

An Excellent Self-Reflection Exercise.  LinkedIn Maps creates a helpful visualization of your LinkedIn connections.  

However, what I find most helpful is how LinkedIn Maps forces you to understand why/who you chose to connect with in your professional network (or even more importantly, why you chose not to connect).

Trust me, it’s not very obvious till you think about it.

Successful businesspeople use self-reflection often during their careers.  Here’s some great insight about the importance of self-reflection from Jeffrey Pfeffer of Stanford University Business School. 

Conclusion

 

LinkedIn Signal and LinkedIn Swarm are additional LinkedIn Labs products I’ll play and experiment with in the future.

 

More importantly, it’s great that LinkedIn continues innovating.  And, I don’t believe it’s due to their upcoming IPO.  Continued innovation will sustain and earn the company another 100 million registered users. 

Wouldn’t it be great to see a future infographic celebrating a 200 million member milestone?

Photo Credit: by Noize Photography via Flickr
 

Your Turn

Please let me know if you agree or disagree with my thoughts in the comments. I would love to hear from you. I’m here to read, listen, and learn from YOUR PERSPECTIVE.   Comments are open. So let’er rip!

 

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