How LinkedIn helped me land my first job at Microsoft

[Ed. note: This belongs to our series of posts from LinkedIn users featuring tips for recent grads. Adam Conrad is a masters student in Computer Science at Brown University. He will be graduating in May and beginning work for Microsoft in July. His focus is on web development and databases, which you can read more of at his blog here]

I was invited a few years ago to try LinkedIn, when there were literally a few thousand accounts total. I didn't give it much thought because I already had a Facebook account, and it seemed the same.

Then, last summer, LinkedIn got a huge face lift and I noticed that so many people were using this site, and it started to get me thinking that I should get on the LinkedIn wave. I completed my account and started noticing more requests to friend users, including hiring managers. One day, out of the blue, while working at my internship a representative from Microsoft sent me an InMail and asked if I was interested in working for a new division of the company this year. I told them I was still in school, and I was out of the market until 2009 (which was my standard reply to many of the companies who saw me as graduated from undergraduate study).

Despite this, they still said "let's have you meet up with someone at the new division" so a few weeks later, I was having breakfast with the VP of Engineering at Microsoft's new Boston office. He liked what he saw and rushed to get me an interview before the wave of college interviews across the country. At the end of the summer, I already had passed a phone screening and was scheduled for an interview the first of September, weeks before regular hiring began.

About a week later, I was offered an amazing job at Microsoft in Boston, and it wouldn't have happened without LinkedIn. I am now gainfully employed in this new economy, which is amazing.