LinkedIn is a great source for validating someone's experience. Think of your profile as a marketing doc telling your prospects and clients why YOU are best person to work with in your field. Describe your experience to show how you got where you are today and make sure it is written in a way that is relevant to your clients. Having a complete profile will really help people find information about you and more ways to connect.

I think it entirely depends on what field you're in. Several of the responses you've received here emphasize that LinkedIn is vital to your success. Let me be the voice of doubt though. I work in a field where networking is moderately helpful, but certainly not crucial (unlike, say, the sales field). And all I have to say is that I think it's negligibly helpful. Yes, maybe, JUST MAYBE there's someone out there who's a friend of a coworker of a friend you used to know in college who's just waiting to offer a job to you based on a social networking profile. But I think the odds are that your time would be better spent doing some face-to-face networking.

Then again, it can't hurt either. I just wouldn't pin my hopes, desires, and expectations to one B-list social networking site.

http://www.watchmojo.com/blogs/images/linkedin2.jpg

Are you looking for a job? Then it is extremely important.

That said, you can be a bit selective about what you list. Consider it a more flexible, social, instantly customizable CV. Sure, you should list all of your relevant work experience, but if something's ancient history, ditch it. Or, if you had some really cool life experience when you were younger that's at all related to your work capabilities (say your parents were international businesspeople and you grew up in 12 different countries), you can include that in your summary.

Two things you'll need to work on: making connections and getting recommendations from peers, coworkers, and those you've worked for, experts say. (I say "experts say," because I myself have not heeded this advice. Guaranteed if I was on the job hunt I would do so.)

You can learn more in the Online Marketing section of Inc.com, particularly in the LinkedIn section of "How to Network Effectively." (http://www.inc.com/guides/2010/08/how-to-network-effectively.html). Chris Brogan, author of Social Media 101, has some additional tips on his website that might be worth checking out (http://www.chrisbrogan.com/use-linkedin-effectively).

I agree it is really important - more than even I thought, until a former coworker found my profile and contacted me about a fantastic job opportunity. He'd shown my profile to a potential employer. My profile was basically just a rehash of my resume, including previous positions and contact info (no recommendations at that point). The job involved work similar to something I'd done many years ago - so I'm certain that employer looked at the past positions.

I was honestly stunned. I only had about 40 "connections" on LinkedIn and had just kind of thrown up a resume for my profile. Out of the blue, I get contacted and I wound up getting the job. And it definitely wasn't because of what I was doing at the time - it was based on something I'd listed under previous positions.

LinkedIn is a great way to network with people in your field of expertise. If you are looking for a job or are interested in working on projects in a specific field, then you definitely need a complete LinkedIn profile. Listing your previous employment shows what you can do and can lead people to contact you if they have been employed in the same areas. Recommendations is a way to lend credibility to the work that you have done previously and helps show that other people appreciated the work from you enough to let others know. So filling in the profile completely can be beneficial in several ways.