Tag: networking

Using LinkedIn in a Job Search

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool in a job search. You can use it to uncover opportunities. It can help you gain referrals into companies, and it can help you research jobs. Using LinkedIn in your job search is also easy.

LinkedIn can be a powerful tool in a job search.  You can use it to uncover opportunities.  It can help you gain referrals into companies, and it can help you research jobs.  Using LinkedIn in your job search is also easy.

On Monday, I wrote about building your LinkedIn network.  This is an essential first step to using LinkedIn.  Once you start building your network, you can start leveraging the contacts you develop.

The easiest way to use LinkedIn for your job search is to check out the job postings.  A lot of companies post positions on LinkedIn.  This doesn’t require network building.  All you have to do is search the jobs.  Although there is a benefit to job postings, this is just a starting point.

The real value LinkedIn offers is in gathering intelligence.  Knowing the priorities and goals of a hiring manager can give you a significant edge in the hiring process.  Failing to understand what a hiring manager wants can make it difficult to tailor your presentation, both with your resume and in interviews.  LinkedIn offers a great way to gather insight into the hiring priorities of a company.

Researching Profiles

The first step in researching a position on LinkedIn is to read the profiles of people in similar positions.  Ideally, you will be able to find the profile of the hiring manager, but this isn’t always possible.  In large companies, there is a good chance you will find people doing the job you are pursuing.  They may be in other locations, but their profiles can still give you insight you can use.  Just remember many people don’t update their profiles routinely.  The “current” descriptions can be a year or more old.

LinkedIn Answers

LinkedIn Answers offers a great way to pose a question to a large group of people.  A lot of LinkedIn users actively participate by answering questions.  If you ask a broad question, there’s a good chance you will get good info from a number of people.  When asking a question, ask something that a lot of people in a company could answer and that would be valuable to more than just you.  For example:
How would you describe the culture at Widget, Inc?  I’m interested a job opportunity in (department or division) with Widget, Inc and would like to get an idea of what it is like working there.
How does the hiring process work at Widget, Inc?  I’m pursing a <job title> position and want to understand what I should expect during the hiring process.

With large companies, you should get some answers that will be useful.  For small companies, this tactic is unlikely to yield much.  You can check how many people from a company are on LinkedIn by clicking on the company name in someone’s profile.

Asking For Help

Instead of broadcasting a question to everyone, you can ask a question of specific individuals within your network.  With large companies, you can often find someone doing the job you want in a different location.  Asking this person about their job and how they got their job can often yield great insight.  Stick with questions the person can answer easily.  For example, if you find a person hired in the last year, you can ask how the hiring process worked when they were hired and what they did that was effective in landing the position.  Asking a question like “what is the manager at xyz location looking for” is not a question most people in other locations will be able to answer.  You’re unlikely to get any response to this.

Getting Referred

As you interact with people through direct contacts and LinkedIn Answers, you will start building relationships with people.  At some point, you may get to know someone who offers to refer you to the hiring manager for consideration.  This can improve your chances of success dramatically.  It’s not that the hiring manager will lower their standards – those won’t change.  What will change will be the level of scrutiny you will receive early in the process.  Many hiring managers receive an overwhelming number of resumes.  Most only get a 15 to 30 second look before being rejected.  You can improve your chances by getting the hiring manager to take a much closer look before making a decision.

Remember the rule of networking – it’s a two-way street.  Individuals aren’t going to drop what they are doing to start working on your job search full time and a person isn’t going to recommend you for a position if they don’t think you will be successful.  People will help you but it will be on their terms.  You also need to try to help them.  There will be times, in the short run, when networking is one sided – either you get a significant benefit without offering much or you provide a lot of help without getting anything in return.  In the short run this is possible, but over the long term, both parties need to contribute.  If one side is perceived as only interested in their self promotion, the relationship won’t work.

Building Your LinkedIn Network

Linked In is one of the best professional networking tools available. It offers the ability to find and meet professionals in almost any field, company or region. With over 45 million users, it is very likely you will find people who can influence your career.

LinkedIn is one of the best professional networking tools available.  It offers the ability to find and meet professionals in almost any field, company or region.  With over 45 million users, it is very likely you will find people who can influence your career.

If you are new to LinkedIn, you will need to build a profile and start inviting people.  This is very easy.  Your profile is similar to a resume, but you have much greater flexibility in what you include and emphasize.  Building your network is easy too.  It is likely a lot of people you know are on Linked In.  All you need to do is search for them and invite them to connect.

Linked In is relationship based.  You need to link to people to get value.  It may seem difficult to build a large network.  Connecting to 45 million people may seem like an impossibility.   Fortunately, you only need to connect to a few people to build a valuable network.  The reason for this is simple.  You have access to the profiles of anyone within three connections.  The key is linking to people with large networks.

When I started with LinkedIn a few years ago, I added a couple dozen connections almost immediately.  I then struggled to figure out who to invite.  Most of my connections had only a few connections.  My network was small, a few thousand profiles.

I was recruiting and met a candidate with a couple thousand contacts.  I connected with him and instantly, my network increased to close to a million.  I had access to key decision makers in hundreds of companies and an ability to research companies and people.  It became clear that a huge network has tremendous value.  I started looking for ways to increase my network.

There are a few easy steps to increase in your network quickly.  If you set your profile up right, your network will build itself.

Step 1: Search for Open Networkers
You can do a keyword search for common email addresses.  The easiest is gmail.  By running a keyword search for the word gmail, you will get over four thousand people on Linked In who have put their gmail address in their profile.  You can then invite them to connect to you.  It doesn’t take many people in this group to grow your network substantially.  Most will have hundreds or thousands of individual contacts.

Step 2:  Join an Open Networking Group
I joined the LIONS, Linked In Open Networkers (Note: the last time I checked, their website was down.), a couple of years ago.  When you join, you can download the list of LIONS, along with the email address of everyone.  You can then upload this list to Linked In and invite everyone at once.  I went from a hundred contacts to two thousand almost overnight.  With the LIONS, you can then add your name to the list.  You will receive a couple of invitations a day from this and your network will grow on its own.  I’ve added several hundred connections over the last year just by accepting the invites I receive this way.  I’ve been stuck around 2,600 contacts for several months and decided to download the lions list again.  There were nearly a thousand new people on this list.  I loaded it and sent invites to all of them.  Because I am on the list, I found I was already connected to half of the people, and sent invites to the other 500.  With the invitations, I will top 3,000 connections this week.

Step 3:  Add Your Email Address to Your Profile
Make it easy for people to invite you.  Add our email address to your profile.  If you have a Gmail account, use it.  It will make it easy for people to find you.  The key is to help people connect directly to you.

Step 4:  Promote Your Linked In Profile
If you have a website, blog or other social media profiles online, include your LinkedIn profile with instructions for how to connect.  This will help generate a consistent stream of invitations coming directly to you.  To connect to me, send an invitation to [email protected].

Step 5:  Join Groups
A good way to gain access to larger networks is to join some LinkedIn groups.  Most schools have alumni groups online.  Professional organizations and companies also have groups established.  I joined a few of them.  In addition to the school, company and professional organization groups, I joined a couple open networker groups.  I’m already connected to most of these people, so the groups didn’t do much for my connections.  The reason I joined was to reinforce on my profile that I welcome invitations to connect.

If you follow these five steps, or even just a couple of them, you can build your network quickly and efficiently.

How to Start Building an Industry Presence

Yesterday, I wrote 10 Ways to Get Employers to Find You.  Today, I want to give you a simple, easy to follow plan to get started utilizing a few of these techniques.

You’re probably thinking that this isn’t going to be easy, no matter what I say.  The truth is, it can be easy if you make it easy.  Despite this, very few people will do what is necessary.  This isn’t because the techniques are difficult to implement.  The reason that few people will do these things is that they are slow to work.

Most people want a quick solution.  A slow, methodical plan, no matter how effective, just isn’t appealing.  If you want employers to seek you out, you need to do two things, and neither can be achieved overnight.  You need to become a recognized expert in your field and you need to build a huge network of professionals that know and respect you.

The Step-by-Step Plan

  • Step 1: Setup a LinkedIn account and build a profile.  This will give people a place to learn about you and your career.
  • Step 2: On LinkedIn each week, invite one or two people in your industry that you don’t know to connect to you on LinkedIn.  To do this, consider getting a premium account on LinkedIn. It will make the process much easier.
  • Step 3: Start following the LinkedIn Answers or Yahoo Answers for topics in your field.  Participate by answering a few questions a week.
  • Step 4: Search for blogs and forums related to your industry and pick one or more to follow.  Participate in the discussions by posting comments.
  • Step 5: Write one or two articles per month and post them on an article marketing site.
  • Step 6: As you build a library of articles you have written, begin referencing these in you Answers, blog and forum postings. This will reinforce with your network that you are an expert and that you actively contribute to the field.

Time Commitment

Building a network is not something that will happen over night.  It will take work and time.  Fortunately, the time commitment isn’t huge.

  • LinkedIn Profile Setup – 5 Hours – One-Time: Setting up a profile can be done very quickly, but to do this right, it will take a few hours.  The more time you put in writing about your background the more effective the profile will be.
  • Invitations – 10 min/wk: Sending one or two invites per week will only take a minute or two.  What may take time is conversing with your new connections.  Some will accept your invites without a response.  Others will send a personal email and start a discussion to get to know you.
  • Answers – 30 min/wk: The time commitment here is up to you. 30 minutes a week to read and answer questions can be very effective.
  • Blog Comments – 30 min/wk: Reading and participating in blogs and discussions can be effective with 30 minutes a week.
  • Articles – 1-2 Articles per month – Time Varies: The time commitment here will vary with your writing skill.  Some people can knock out really good articles very quickly.  Others may require 10 or more hours per article.  The key isn’t writing a lot, it’s being consistent over time.  One article per month will develop a significant portfolio over next couple years.  Expect the first few articles to take some time, but you will get faster and it will get easier with time.

If you follow these steps, you will build relationships and propel your career forward.  Because this is a slow process, few people will take the time to do this.  If you do this, you will differentiate yourself from your competition.  Don’t give up if you can’t devote this much time – just scale back to what you can do.

The Results

Now, fast forward a couple years.  You decide you want to make a career change, and start the process by contacting people in your network and ask them for help.  Some of the individuals you have developed a relationship with will be happy to recommend you to their companies.  Their referral will be more than just passing your resume to HR.  They will be able (and probably very willing) to share with key managers that you are an expert in the field, have published a number of industry articles and are a resource others in the industry turn to with questions.  In most cases, you’re going to get a very close look and have a great chance of getting hired.

10 Ways to Get Employers to Find You

In life, it is not what you know or who you know that counts — it is both!
Anthony J. D'Angelo, The College Blue Book

Becoming a recognized expert in your industry and developing a large network are two steps that can propel your career.  Very few people devote much if any time to either of these tasks.  The ones that do, are often sought out by employers. 

Both of these goals may seem extremely difficult to achieve.  The truth is that they are much easier to reach than they appear.  I'm going share 10 ways to improve your industry standing and build your network.  These techniques will help employers find you when they need to fill a key position.

The benefits are simple:

  • You will learn more and develop faster as a professional
  • You will build relationships that will expose you to opportunities, often before you decide to make a career change
  • You will have a network to tap into for opportunities if you find you need to make a career move
  • You will meet potential employees you can hire

Most of these steps require very little time on a weekly basis.  What they do require is a commitment to consistently work on them.  If you do this, a few minutes each day, you can make a huge impact on your career.

The Plan

To become an industry expert, recognized by your peers, it is important to study your industry.  Find resources that publish good content in your field and follow them.  Google Reader, RSS Feeds and other free services make this easy.  If you are not familiar with these, check them out – they're really easy to use and can save a lot of time.

Once you are comfortable that you understand your field (you are probably already at this point), start contributing.  Share your expertise, either by writing articles and white papers, or by participating in online discussions.  In either case, you will begin interacting with people in you field you would not otherwise know. 

As your presence in the field grows, your expertise will continue to increase and you will build your network. 

10 Ways to Build Your Presence

  1. LinkedIn – Create a profile on LinkedIn and link to people in your industry.  Try to add one or two new contacts every week.  In a couple years, you will have 200 people in your field that you know and can help you.  Remember, networking is always most effective when you look for ways to help others, not just yourself.
  2. Personal Website – Create a personal website outlining your background and professional interests.  This gives people a chance to find you and understand your career.
  3. Facebook – Create a Facebook page (or Myspace or one of the other Social Networking sites) and share you career background and interests. The social networking pages are designed to be places for social interaction, but this doesn't mean they can't be used to help your career.  Obama and McCain both have Facebook pages.  In fact, Obama has over 40 different Facebook accounts (Virignia for Obama, NY for Obama, etc.).  Janis Joplin, the singer who died in 1970, has a Facebook page.   There's a book store in the UK with a page, a number of charities and a bunch of Arts festivals with Facebook pages. 
  4. Industry Forums – Most fields have industry associations that sponsor online forums where people can post questions or participate in discussions.  Join one or more of these and contribution to the group.  In the IT field, searching forums has been a very effective way for recruiters to find talented candidates. If you are in an industry without an effective forum, you can start one, although this is much more time consuming.
  5. Article Marketing – Write articles and post them on article databases.  EzineArticles.com is the biggest.  By posting an article you authorize publishers to reprint your article on their websites or in print as long as they credit you as the author. 
  6. Answers – LinkedIn Answers and Yahoo Answers both have very active communities.  You can post a question on any topic if you need information.  By answering questions, you can develop a reputation as an expert. 
  7. Blog Comments – Visit blogs in your industry and post comments.  Add additional information to a post or pose a question for the author. 
  8. Hub Pages/Lens – Set up an account on Squidoo or Hubpages and create a resource page for your industry.
  9. Knol – This is a new article posting site on Google.  Post some articles in your field.
  10. Blog – Start writing a blog about your industry.  One or two posts a week will grow and become a significant online presence.  This a bigger commitment, both in time and effort, but can be very effective.  If you can't write consistently, look to the article databases like EzineArticles and publish articles from other authors to supplement what you write. 

If you commit to a few of these activities on a routine, consistent basis, you will build a very effective network that will provide significant benefits to your career.