Linked In

[Papak]

I thought is was Facebook for grown-ups.

I'm a member (including groups) but I fail to see the point to be honest.

 

[Springal]

Depends on your job. In a sales / customer facing role it is pretty invaluable. Especially looking for leads, 'named' contacts are prospects etc. Some of my now biggest customers I have used on this method, so it definitely works.

 

[Aadam]

I am in the IT industry it's worked for me. Got my current new role through being found on Linked In. I get quite a few messages from 'agents' about available work. It is good for those interested in changing, but I don't see the benefits for those in employment and not looking to move.

Tips for the unemployed, get into IT.

 

[Kumquat]

I am in the IT industry it's worked for me. Got my current new role through being found on Linked In. I get quite a few messages from 'agents' about available work. It is good for those interested in changing, but I don't see the benefits for those in employment and not looking to move.

Tips for the unemployed, get into IT.

Any particular suggestions IT wise? I'm taking redundancy and looking to do something different - re-train. Was thinking of IT but would be interested to know which particular area of IT most of the money and jobs are.

 

[Badger]

Any particular suggestions IT wise? I'm taking redundancy and looking to do something different - re-train. Was thinking of IT but would be interested to know which particular area of IT most of the money and jobs are.

I would suggest learning a programming language, Java or C# are probably your best bets. Getting into mobile app development is also a good way to go, you can easily teach yourself the basics from a book and the internet has answers to pretty much every question you will ever need to ask.

 

[Kumquat]

I would suggest learning a programming language, Java or C# are probably your best bets. Getting into mobile app development is also a good way to go, you can easily teach yourself the basics from a book and the internet has answers to pretty much every question you will ever need to ask.

Cheers. Taught myself basic HTML back in the early days of the web from a book which I managed so thought it may be even easier these days to self-train as well. Will look into it.

 

[Lyndhurst 14]

I do not use LinkedIn. I prefer to be off the radar with my work and private life so I do not use LinkedIn, Facebook and stopped Twitter after 3 tweets. For my work it is useful and I know friends who have found work from it but I am quite proud of the fact in 14 years of being self-employed I have never used an agent and get my work direct through work contacts, colleagues and friends. I also have a good friends who is on LinkedIn and sends me tip offs from the site if he thinks I might be interested in something. I never say never but for now I, personally, do not see its value.

Agree with your comments about LinkedIn. Maybe it works if you have a fairly generic job but as I’m a quantity surveyor / project manager I’ll always use specialist construction recruitment firms. I recently looked at my connections, a lot tend to be existing friends, facebook contacts etc – all good people but not really much use if it came to finding a new job. Informal networking is always a good bet – I got my current job in New York as a result of bumping into an ex-colleague on Victoria Station.

 

[Kumquat]

Agree with your comments about LinkedIn. Maybe it works if you have a fairly generic job but as I’m a quantity surveyor / project manager I’ll always use specialist construction recruitment firms. I recently looked at my connections, a lot tend to be existing friends, facebook contacts etc – all good people but not really much use if it came to finding a new job. Informal networking is always a good bet – I got my current job in New York as a result of bumping into an ex-colleague on Victoria Station.

Absolutely agree on informal networking. I'm lining myself up some temporary work through a friend of a friend down the pub who put me in touch. Purely down to mentioning that I'd done similar stuff before.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

Despite the fact I have 150 connections or something, I can't honestly say I've found this site particularly useful yet.

I'm envisaging it to be quite useful when job hunting, but hopefully I won't need to find that out any time soon. And I subscribe to 3 groups too, yet rarely need to look at any of the instigated discussions.

I've probably got a dozen connections who themselves have more than 500 connections so these people must find it useful. I'm curious to find out how so.

What are NSC's experiences of this site then?

Having been on there for ages, I tend to agree - very useful for me for job hunting when I was interested, and I still get regular calls about jobs now - which is useful, even though I'm not looking, it keeps my DB of agents up to date in case I need them. Apart from that, and maybe looking up old colleagues, no real use at all.

 

[Aadam]

Any particular suggestions IT wise? I'm taking redundancy and looking to do something different - re-train. Was thinking of IT but would be interested to know which particular area of IT most of the money and jobs are.

In the simplest form, software testing. You can do a basic ISEB diploma and get an entry level testing job within an industry you've experience in. Permanent around £20,000 to £50,000 depending on experience and location. Contractors are usually paid between £200-£500 a day depending on location and experience.

If you're analytical, you can get into the business or systems side of it (depending what you prefer) as a Business or Systems analyst. Generally this requires a lot of experience within an industry, again you can take ISEB qualifications which seem to be a default search term for agents these days. Permanent around £30,000 to £70,000 depending on location and experience. Contractors usually demand from £350 to £750 a day depending on location.

Then if you're really technical you can move into application development. But you'd be required to know and understand programming languages. I'm not sure of the rates for these as not close enough, but a scan on the internet should give you an idea. It's usually higher than the above.

I know people that have gone into software testing for 4-5 years and then move into contracting and have not looked back since. A lot of jobs out there for this sort of role. However, it seems that testing and development seems to be one of those positions that is being increasingly out-sourced, the analysis roles not so much.

 

[Tricky Dicky]

In the simplest form, software testing. You can do a basic ISEB diploma and get an entry level testing job within an industry you've experience in. Permanent around £20,000 to £50,000 depending on experience and location. Contractors are usually paid between £200-£500 a day depending on location and experience.

If you're analytical, you can get into the business or systems side of it (depending what you prefer) as a Business or Systems analyst. Generally this requires a lot of experience within an industry, again you can take ISEB qualifications which seem to be a default search term for agents these days. Permanent around £30,000 to £70,000 depending on location and experience. Contractors usually demand from £350 to £750 a day depending on location.

Then if you're really technical you can move into application development. But you'd be required to know and understand programming languages. I'm not sure of the rates for these as not close enough, but a scan on the internet should give you an idea. It's usually higher than the above.

I know people that have gone into software testing for 4-5 years and then move into contracting and have not looked back since. A lot of jobs out there for this sort of role. However, it seems that testing and development seems to be one of those positions that is being increasingly out-sourced, the analysis roles not so much.

The only comment I would add about testing is that, in my experience, when times are tight, testing positions tend to be the first to be made redundant. As a senior developer, I have hired testers before and work alongside them, and if there has to be a headcount cut, they tend to be seen as expendible. I would argue that potentially it's a false economy move, but people prefer to lose testers and get developers to do thier own testing (not always a good idea, but there you go).

I'd be surprised if a tester can get £750 a day, that sounds very high to me - the best developers are about that at the mo. I was offered £1000 a day 2 years ago, but that was a one-off and I turned it down.

 

[Aadam]

The only comment I would add about testing is that, in my experience, when times are tight, testing positions tend to be the first to be made redundant. As a senior developer, I have hired testers before and work alongside them, and if there has to be a headcount cut, they tend to be seen as expendible. I would argue that potentially it's a false economy move, but people prefer to lose testers and get developers to do thier own testing (not always a good idea, but there you go).

I'd be surprised if a tester can get £750 a day, that sounds very high to me - the best developers are about that at the mo. I was offered £1000 a day 2 years ago, but that was a one-off and I turned it down.

I agree. And the business tends to get involved a lot when testing numbers are short.

I said testers can get between £200-£500 a day. Business and systems analysts would command between £350-£750 a day

 

[Kumquat]

Cheers for everyone's advice.

 

[NickBHAFC18]

Any particular suggestions IT wise? I'm taking redundancy and looking to do something different - re-train. Was thinking of IT but would be interested to know which particular area of IT most of the money and jobs are.

IMO, and not being racist, but if your British getting into development would be the best idea, you wont be short on work and the contract rates are good.

The only comment I would add about testing is that, in my experience, when times are tight, testing positions tend to be the first to be made redundant. As a senior developer, I have hired testers before and work alongside them, and if there has to be a headcount cut, they tend to be seen as expendible. I would argue that potentially it's a false economy move, but people prefer to lose testers and get developers to do thier own testing (not always a good idea, but there you go).

I'd be surprised if a tester can get £750 a day, that sounds very high to me - the best developers are about that at the mo. I was offered £1000 a day 2 years ago, but that was a one-off and I turned it down.

Spot on. About 2 months ago there were so many testers out of work!

 

[Badger]

The only comment I would add about testing is that, in my experience, when times are tight, testing positions tend to be the first to be made redundant. As a senior developer, I have hired testers before and work alongside them, and if there has to be a headcount cut, they tend to be seen as expendible. I would argue that potentially it's a false economy move, but people prefer to lose testers and get developers to do thier own testing (not always a good idea, but there you go).

I'd be surprised if a tester can get £750 a day, that sounds very high to me - the best developers are about that at the mo. I was offered £1000 a day 2 years ago, but that was a one-off and I turned it down.

I go along with this, testing is seen as something that can be done by other developers (a bad move IMO), analysts and even end users when times are tough. At my last company I was there for 2 rounds of redundancies and the testers were always the first to go.

Having said that there is a good route from testing to development, many testers write automated regression tests which is effectively writing an application that runs the application you want to test. If you can pick up those kinds of skills it should be quite easy to find work.

 

[Beach Hut]

I assume it has more relevance to job hunting as previously mentioned as I seem to gain loads of connections however not sure of what use they are unless I was looking for a job.

 

[Nick Jarvis]

I’m a recruiter for a US software firm and we probably recruit 50% of our sales and technical staff through linkedIn. Either through paid adverts (the quality of candidates through there is better than any job board for a role over say £30k) and through tapping up competitors. I also found it very useful when I was interviewing for jobs as there were a couple of companies that I had friends of friends working for that I wouldn’t have realized if it hadn’t have been through linkedIn who gave me the inside scoop.

If you’ve no intention of looking for a new job then its use is pretty limited (some groups have some interesting discussions but you can probably find better elsewhere on the web). But If you are looking / interested to hear whats out there then make sure your key words and blurb us up to date (so you come up on recruiter searches).

Personally I rarely take any notice of linked in recommendations as 9 times out of 10 they seem to be ‘I’ll scratch your back if you scratch mine’ type recommendations.

 

[Tim Over Whelmed]

I find it very useful but have been very picky with whom I link. In other words I've checked location / skills etc first whereas others I know just want as many contacts as possible.

 

[Plastic-Fantastic]

It's good simply as an online CV, the last time I had a job interview I noticed that the person interviewing me had looked at my profile prior to calling me in. My friend works in IT recruitment and uses Linked In to find all his candidates.

 

[The Mole]

One of the most useful things about linked in is being able to keep in contact with agents who move around frequently - very important when you're a contractor. Also I have manage to contact a few people I have worked with in he past