I’ve been trying to figure out LinkedIn. I actually find it a challenging platform. It differs from other social media platforms–Facebook, Instagram, X, YouTube, etc.–in that the lives of average people rely on it. There are some telling statistics in here about how many recruiters rely exclusively on LinkedIn for finding talent (although there is an entire industry of jobs not published on the open market), so it’s something that we need to learn inside and out if we want to find a good job, regardless of what industry we’re a part of.

Even though the book coats on the praise for LinkedIn a bit too heavily, I came away from the book with the sense that the platform isn’t the ground-zero of searching for jobs after all. It is important: most job-seekers need to have a profile there, and so many jobs are on display on the website. Yet, it is simply an algorithmic tool (being sold to recruiters rather than job seekers) that you can use to enhance your professional network. There are ways of reaching out to people, seeing who you have shared contacts with, and get a sense of what alumni from your past universities are up to. Additionally, it’s an excellent tool for doing research on organizations.

But, as has been mentioned many, many times before: getting a job is entirely about who you know, and hunting for work will be far easier if your reputation precedes you.

While the book is about LinkedIn as a platform, Garriott and Schifeling offer much better advice for networking introverts than Matthew Pollard does in his book. There are samples about what you might say that seem far more human than “I am the market maven and I am at your service.”

Honestly, for those on the job market (or looking to hunt for a job soon), this should be the book you begin with. It’s well-worth the time.