Career question: Is LinkedIn a useful platform for Job hunting ?

I came across an interesting Question online "Is LinkedIn a useless job hunting platform for non-sales people?". My response follows 

I don’t agree with the premise of the question that LinkedIn is for ‘sales people’. I am not a salesman, and I am quite active on digital platforms like Quora and Linkedin, and use the latter to network professionally.

Here is my little story.

A little more than a year ago, I moved back to India to be around for my aging parents (ref: What were your experiences moving back to India after getting US citizenship? What are the best ways to make this move?).

I applied for an FMLA from my (then) employer and decided to job-search in Bengaluru where I was going to be based. As an Indian American, most of my old professional network in India had scattered in the years since I had migrated.

I was clear about the kind of role I was looking for. I was looking for a non-sales role in technology management, Enterprise Architecture or solution design. LinkedIn stood out as an ideal platform to network and to revive my old network. A few ways I began leveraging the platform

• I activated Linkedin Premium . It is money well spent, and allows candidates to get more analytics about advertised jobs, and to reach out to recruiters and others
• Began actively contributing to the forums on Linkedin - Liking and Commenting on interesting articles, responding to queries and posts in groups that I was interested in.
• I increased the frequency of my Likedin Pulse (blog) posts on a variety of topics
• Continued to apply for interesting roles being advertised in job section

In a matter of weeks, LinkedIn analytics indicated that my profile was beginning to stand out among peers.

• Many in my network began ‘looking’ at updates on my profile and reached out with a ‘hi, how are things’
• I began to receive queries from head-hunters
• I began to receive responses to my job application and had some good interviews and discussions with hiring managers

Yes, I got a couple of interesting job offers and finally took up my current role.