So what do I have left to add? Well, starting from the top, I can add a photo. I'm still skipping that for now. I can get recommendations for previous positions I've held; likewise, I can give recommendations. I can add my interests, groups and associations, and honors and awards. I can add two more web sites.

Finally, I can decide on my contact settings ? how and for what I wish to be contacted. Here you can choose to accept introductions only, or introductions and InMail. (It appears that InMail is currently a paid feature). You can give users advice about contacting you, and choose to be contacted for eight different opportunities (career opportunities, consulting offers, new ventures, etc).

I decide to make a recommendation; if I do it right, I figure I can get one in return, and I sorely need one. Here's the first screen the pop-up showing here is what I got when I clicked on the link that said ?select from your connections list.? So I make my choices and continue. Here's the next screen, before I've added anything:

The positions listed in the ?Choose a position? drop-downs are the ones both you and the person you're recommending have included in your respective profiles. The ones listed under ?Basis of recommendation? are designed to cover most situations, including direct manager/subordinate, working with each other in the same (or different groups), and a more indirect relationship where one person was junior to the other, but did not report directly to them.

Once you recommend someone, they receive a message notifying them of your recommendation. Your profile also changes to note that you've made the recommendation (you can always change it).

Meanwhile, other changes I've made to my profile may be starting to pay off. Link din's system is set up to spot commonalities in people's profiles ? in this case, people who have worked at the same company at the same time. So Linked In may not have a separate profile for Faulkner Information Services, but it recognizes the company name well enough to spot it in the profiles of three other people who worked for the company at the same time I did. Unfortunately, I don't recognize their names immediately, but I can always look up their profiles later to see if it jogs my memory. Incidentally, this is a good reason to upload a photo to your Linked In profile (which I plan to do after I finish this article). At any rate, Linked In makes it easy for me to connect to these people.