Here is a copy of that letter:

Dear Laurie,

I want to personally thank you because you were one of LinkedIn’s first 100,000 members (member number 39974 in fact!*). In any technology adoption lifecycle, there are the innovators, those who help lead the way. That was you.

We hit a big milestone at LinkedIn this week when our 100 millionth member joined the site.

When we founded LinkedIn, our vision was to help the world’s professionals be more successful and productive. Today, with your help, LinkedIn is changing the lives of millions of members by helping them connect with others, find jobs, get insights, start a business, and much more.

We are grateful for your support and look forward to helping you accomplish much more in the years to come. I hope that you are having a great year.

Sincerely,

Reid Hoffman
Co-founder and Chairman
LinkedIn

*Your member number is the number embedded in your LinkedIn profile URL (after “id=”).

I started using Linkedin over seven years ago mostly because as a mobile IBM worker, I had no desk and so keeping a rolodex wasn’t digital enough for me.    I was also using Friendster, encouraged by a friend in Hong Kong, well before Facebook took over my personal social life and I tried Plaxo for a bit before I gave up.

I really only grasped the huge value of Linkedin, however, when I took my first maternity leave in 2005 only to return 12 months later and instantly be able to find my marketing network because each person had updated their own profile.   Heaven.

In 2009, when the market took a dive and I was laid off in my twelfth month of my second maternity leave (after hiring a nanny), I turned to linkedin to better position me and my business.  I used Linkedin strategically – optimizing not only my profile but how I used the tool in order to make connections, update my network and secure information.

In the year of exponential social media growth (still in 2009), I had a lot of friends in career transition.   Many of whom were not on Linkedin or if they were, not using the tool well.  So I started to trade drinks for lessons with friends.   I got pretty good so I made my community give back to volunteer at employment centers around the city to teach disadvantaged people how to use social media to find a job.  I taught close to 700 people how to use Linkedin.   During that time – I started to win business through Linkedin – some quite sizable deals – not to mention provide social media education & consulting across the gamut of networks.  I often asserted that too many companies forgot Linkedin as a potential B2B strategy.

(Its at this point that I fear readers think a personal usage of Linkedin formed the only foundation for my social media expertise… no actually my eight years in emerging tech at IBM and years in marketing – contribute far more)

This is all a long way of saying how grateful I am for this relationship with Linkedin.   And it certainly was nice to see correspondence from Linkedin outside of their proprietary messaging system.

1.  In Profile Settings:  Make your profile public

For job searching – you will need to open up your public profile so that prospective employers and recruiters can find you.

Make your profile photo visible and display the full profile information.  On the next page, you will see which items you can check off for public publishing.  I recommend checking off EVERYTHING while you are job searching.  Once you have a job – you can scale it back.

2. Network updates: Maximize your view on what your network is doing

In your home page settings area of your account settings – you can manage your “NETWORK UPDATES”.   This area is where you control what updates you receive on all your connections.  If you are job searching – then choose a high number of updates that you would like to see on your home page (see below little pull down menu with the no. 25).  Then choose to see all the updates.

Networking in 2009 is about interacting and engaging.  Good interactions have good graces; engage about other people’s new news.  You see someone get a new job – congratulate them.  Increase your network size by following what others are doing.

3. Privacy Settings:  Manage what others see about your activities.

This section holds some of the most important settings.  You want to control what changes or activities other people can see.

3.1  Profile Views:  Who views  your profile?

On your home page, linkedin tells you how many people have viewed your profile.  Watch these numbers improve as you develop your profile and connections!

Beyond recruitment searches, the viewings are also driven by your status and news updates, your participation in any questions & answers as well as key terms that are picked up in key word searches (in your profile, in the summary, in the specialties listing).

When you click on “see more” – you can see five profiles of who viewed your profile.  How much you see below depends on the privacy settings for the individual.

4. My Network:  Using your network

The last setting is under “my network”.   At an initial pass, some recruiters or opportunities filter out those who are not looking for a job or contract positions.  Leave yourself open.

Good luck in your job search.

I trust that you’ve found this file helpful in setting up your Linkedin account.  Please feel free to drop me a line on how you are doing.

-        Laurie Dillon-Schalk  @ldillonschalk

This handout was prepared by Laurie Dillon-Schalk to share with newcomers to Canada and people in transition for employment resource agencies funded by Employment Ontario.

As an indication of how heavily demanded this learning is, the course was signed up overcapacity (again!) at 35 individuals and ten more on the waiting list. (the room was small and so very hot). One of the nicest things said to me at the beginning of the course was from Eddie who grabbed my hand in hello and said “I’ve been looking forward to this ALL month”. And I believed him. What faith!

I mean to upload my current presentation and tools in my linkedin profile (coming!) and still – I wanted to share a very neat video link to anyone drifting through..

As you may not know – $405 is the maximium unemployment benefit you can receive in New York State.   So for those who were earning over six figures – its a pretty big fall during a great recession.    The Gotham Gazette, NYC paper, wrote an interesting article about the realities of being unemployed in New York.

I was contacted by Garrett to see if I would be a contributing writer for the blog.   I wrote back asking if he says this to all the blogs but Garrett confessed to liking my writing style and being serious.  AH .. his timing was wonderful and the news brighten my day.

I am pleased as punch to contribute.  The move make more of my volunteer work.

My only professional hesitation is that I really want to be much more than just ‘using social media in job search’ – I want to be about using social media to rock your customer, change the game, create idea jams and engage with customers on levels not yet imagined by most.   [not just me - many of my colleagues in social media pine for this]

The changes that I see that – for the home building industry, for retail, for insurance, for government, for every industry!  And yet – my work in social recruiting 2.0 and job search seems to be hitting a wild nerve – not surprisingly given the market realities.   So as much as I want to talk about how the condo market should be using social media more, or how under utilized youtube is, I continue to talk about jobs.

Now.. if I could just figure out how to get Employment Ontario and the federal government to fund my work…