Lisa Takeuchi Cullen is a New York-based staff writer for TIME Magazine. She writes about workplace trends on her blog called "Work in Progress" – a daily look at life on the job. The following tips are an extract from Lisa’s post on tricks and tips for networkers, job hunters and hirers (Source: Lisa’s workplace blog via TIME).

1. Get to know the "advanced search" function.

   This is a great and probably underused tool. The page allows you to
   narrow a search with industry categories and titles, but the most handy
   search weapon is the keyword search. Say you’re looking for a new job
   in your industry and you want to find out about corporate culture at
   Apple. Type in "’IT consultant’ and Apple" (you can use quote marks to
   search for a phrase and the connectors "and" and "or"), and you’ll get
   two categories of people who define themselves as such: those in your
   network of connections, and those in the wider LinkedIn universe.

2. Scale the six degrees of separation.
   Whenever you view someone’s profile, LinkedIn shows you in a handy
   chart on the right the degrees of separation between you and the person
   profiled. I, for one, respond more friendly-like to friends of friends,
   so if I’m going to say whazzup to Steve Jobs, I know it would help if I
   had an intro from his nephew, who went to school with my next-door
   neighbor. (That didn’t happen, btw. But you get my drift.)

3. Check out a person’s history.

   You can learn a lot about someone on their profile page, if they let
   you (LinkedIn’s "accounts and settings" function lets you set privacy
   controls). For instance, a little dinky called the "one-click
   reference" at the top of the page tells you all the people on the
   network who worked with the person at the company. That’s hugely useful
   for journalists digging for sources, but also if you’re expanding your
   business contacts…. (continued on Lisa’s blog)

Check out the other three tips and tricks for networkers, job hunters & hirers on the TIME Magazine post. Topics ranging from seeking answers to raising your online brand capital. Lisa’s other posts on workplace, business and society trends include snooping bosses, teen interns and cubicles of the future.