sincerely say it is well worth the time setting up your profile and actually

completing it. It is pretty much the

ultimate business networking tool-until replaced by a competitor of course! Much

of facebooks’ features have been mimicked into the site also, which helps

evaluate shared topic interests.

LinkedIn, would be completing one’s profile to the 100% level and obtaining as

many recommendations as possible, although now with Endorsements (from LinkedIn contacts) the written recommendations

have been fully taken over by the latter. Pre-MVP award, I had made

efforts to request recommendations, or exchange them, to grow over the ten

person threshold, since, at the time, I

believed establishing credibility by means of online references is a

significant prerequisite to mastering LinkedIn’s networking potential. If you

recommend someone online, they are taking a leap of faith in you; since it is

something they are willing to state in front of the entire world basically how

that individual feels about your workplace conduct (i.e. playing nice in the

sandbox). However, once the option of endorsements for specific skills became

available, the ease of it simply opened the flood to hundreds of endorsements

(if you are publicly contributing by blogs or writing, this has been my

experience, at least, as you can see below).

describe the way you prefer to work exactly (e.g. personally, I described

following 

Brad McGehee’s Exceptional DBA guide), or the methodology you follow, it

will allow you to bring in qualified clients/opportunities and provide the

chance to filter out unwanted mandates.  My current job in Montreal was found through

recruitment agencies working ironically, in another province!

LinkedIn also provides opportunities for diversity of work, which contributes

to experience on a whole, proves invaluable and maintains the profession of

being a DBA across platforms (or DBA

polyglot as I have pushed), even if only minimal tasks executed over a few

days here and there accumulate into a personal body of knowledge which bloggers

can benefit from themselves, as well as the contribution to community.   Inside organisations, I encourage DBAs to

post blogs to demystify our profession and approach, as well as help educate

Developers and elude some pretty foul code.

usual Curriculum Vitæ or Résumé in North America (unless you are in MX, or the province of QC) but in accordance to the format

obviously, because perhaps if you place details in the wrong portion of your

profile, an opportunity could easily be missed.  I love the way a

mate here in Montreal (Martin Arvisais) describes it as a great place ‘pour vendre ta

salade’ (cute local way of saying to sell your stuff in French). Now you can

upload word documents to your LinkedIn profile directly for those who would

like to see the traditional format. 

The other improvement, although not that recent, is that LinkedIn is much like

a blog platform too, since you can share almost anything. It is method to

make a pillar of the all-important (in this net-oriented generation), Online

Persona.

forthright, showing how you can contribute to your professional community, and

thus leveraging your contacts within this tool.  There are several

SQL Server related groups in LinkedIn, my contributions through the

LinkedIn groups are part of the reason why Canada’s MVP Lead approached me back

in 2009 for a nomination (also, thanks to a referral from SQLServerToolBox.com‘s Scott Stauffer, and

frequent speaker, a SQL DBA based in Vancouver) – therefore, what more

motivation could one implore to Link themselves In.