Lots of professional types rely on LinkedIn – sales professionals, recruitment professionals, people looking for business – it’s a great platform. There’s a load of advice out there on how to compose your profile properly (as it’s really a modern version of your CV or resumé), even down to how to pose for the best photo (one school of thought says since LinkedIn shows your mugshot on the left of the page, then you should face to the right, so it doesn’t look like you’re turning away from your own page…)

Philosophically, you have a decision to make on whether or not you accept unsolicited requests. On one hand, why not accept a request from someone who has looked you up and may one day be a useful contact; on the other, why clutter your network with people you don’t know and maybe have never even met?

Also, should you clean and prune your contact list? Got some free time over Christmas and can’t face another mince pie…? Why not go through your LinkedIn network and if you can’t remember the last time you met that person, delete them… Season of goodwill and all that.

Here’s a tip that may make your life a little easier when you do meet someone and want to exchange professional details – at a cocktail party, for example. Instead of the 20^th century method of giving out little bits of dead tree with rapidly out-of-date contact info/job titles etc, swap contacts using LinkedIn but in real time rather than after the meeting.

First, make sure you have the latest version of the LinkedIn mobile app and that you have it set up with your login. Now, if you look at the top of the LinkedIn home screen, you’ll see a strange little symbol on the right-hand edge of the search box – this is supposed to look like a QR code.

Tap the icon, and you’ll be presented with the phone camera looking for a code to scan. The QR code is just a way of encoding the URL to someone else’s LinkedIn profile.

If you flick to the “My Code” tab, LinkedIn will show you the QR code that it has generated just for you, along with options to export and save the code for use elsewhere (like put it on your business card… oh, wait…)

So, the ideal workflow is that if you want to exchange a connection with someone quickly, then one of you goes into My Code, the other into Scan, and the rest is a matter of waving your phone over theirs and hitting the connect button. Not exactly rocket science, is it?
(that last link is a belter – if you have kids, watch it with them. Props to Dr Chris).