A LinkedIn Story

Regular readers will be aware of my thoughts on LinkedIn, the networking website. It’s a great resource for getting, and staying, in touch with colleagues. The way it works is, you build a list of your contacts, either by finding them on LinkedIn or inviting them to join. Now, your ‘network’ is your contacts, plus their contacts, plus their contacts’ contacts etc. up to 4 degrees. You get to search your network to find, for instance, people in a given field looking for a job, or looking to fill a vacancy, or whatever.
Anyway - my good friend Ken O’Berry recently left Sun for a job at Motricity, a provider of mobile content solutions and services based in Durham, NC. Ken was product line manager for Sun Java System Access Manager, and my boss for nearly a year. If you’re on LinkedIn already, you can read what my endorsement of Ken here; if you’re not on LinkedIn, suffice to say, I learnt most of what I know about product management from Ken - a great loss to Sun, but the move made sense for him.
What I didn’t know until today was that the recruiter had found Ken through LinkedIn. The recruiter was several degrees removed, and the final link to Ken was via someone at another vendor who Ken had worked with several months ago. But it worked. The recruiter was looking for someone with product management expertise in the RTP area, and Ken was looking for a gig closer to home.
So - if you’re in the tech industry, get yourself on LinkedIn. Even if you’re not looking for a job right now, you’ll be glad you built up a network when you do start looking.