Wow! I don’t know where to start. It’s been a whirlwind 24 hours. If you’re new to reading my blog, you probably don’t know about our relocation to Colorado last September, which wound up to be a very short-lived move.

We call it our “11 week vacation in Colorado” or Our Colorado Adventure.

I guess I’ve been online for so long now that social media stories are just a natural part of what we’re doing. However, for those who still have yet to venture into the online world, or who aren’t quite sure what social networking is, it’s still foreign to them, and especially in these economic times, I hope this story gives them ideas on how they can embrace this, too.

Here’s what I mean. Once we had made the decision to move back to Wisconsin, we knew Doug was going to need a job. I had been networking with LinkedIn for a couple of months and suggested that he create a LinkedIn profile, which he did.

He started joining groups, some that were local to the Milwaukee area and some that were not. He pretty much put out there his skills set, what the situation was regarding our move and what he was looking for.

We really didn’t know what was going to happen, and us moving back without him having a job, was a big leap of faith, but we knew he needed to be here in order to interview.

He needed to use all avenues possible to connect with people. He had posted his resume on the big job boards and some local ones, too, although those didn’t really yield the types of contacts that he was looking for.

Our target date for moving back was the weekend before Thanksgiving, which worked out great. We got back on a Sunday, and the next morning woke up to snow on the ground. We couldn’t have timed that any better.

About a week or so later, Doug received an email from a gentleman in Milwaukee introducing himself and said that he was given Doug’s name as a referral from someone on LinkedIn.

Wow, that was pretty cool, we thought. To make a long story short, they started talking, Doug had 2 formal interviews and was offered the job the first week of January.

Krista at LinkedIn has posed the question a couple of weeks ago asking how members were using LinkedIn and how it helped their business or solve a problem for them. I replied and then also told Doug’s story.

I really didn’t think much more about it until yesterday… when I received an email from a producer at Good Morning America who wanted to know more about this story… about the search and connections Doug made via LinkedIn.

She and I talked today for about 1/2 hour and I filled her in on the details of “Our Colorado Adventure”, why we made the decision to move back, the uncertainties of everything we went through, especially in this economy.

Well, they are sending a local camera crew to our house tomorrow night to shoot the interview for a segment that they want to put on GMA, although I don’t know any of those details yet.

This has really shown me that so many people are still not embracing this and that we have just touched the tip of the iceberg with the Internet, with places like LinkedIn and networking in this way.

Pretty exciting stuff!

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