In Pictures: 10 LinkedIn tips to boost your networking success

2. Use LinkedIn's Alumni Tool to Network, Job Hunt

LinkedIn's redesigned Alumni tool helps you find contacts from college and gives you insights into the companies they work for, the fields they work in and where they live. Clicking on each graph will display additional information about the people in that network.

At the top of your Alumni page you'll see a handful of subheads, such as "Where they live," "Where they work," and "What they do." Or, if you're job hunting and know you want to work for Google, for example, use the Alumni tool to find graduates of your school and with your major who work there now.