Part of the fun of being a co-founder of LinkedIn is that people come up to me and tell me about all the ways they use LinkedIn: from finding beta testers to getting clients, from helping friends to researching companies, and from searching for a job to doing investment research. Sometimes I wonder what business problems there might be where your network of connections on LinkedIn can't help. After all, the best information--and the one that provides real competitive advantage--is usually closely-held. It is information that is not accessible to Google, but in someone's head. Typically, you don’t even know in whose head it is. So, it becomes an issue of people search, which is one of the primary applications for which I use LinkedIn.
Once I have found a person who may have relevant knowledge, my real-world contacts can introduce me. Often, they don’t know the person, but they know people who know her; and their good word helps me get in touch to check a reference, learn about a market or gain insights that help me make better decisions.
However, I have also learned that many have not used LinkedIn for much more than hiring employees or getting a job. Not that this is something to sneeze at. Getting a better job can contribute a great deal to personal happiness. So, I was glad to have the opportunity to share at GABA some of the ways LinkedIn can be used to further one’s career. Many of these tips I learned from fellow LinkedIn members, and I also picked up a few new ideas from attendees of the event.
However, I have also learned that many have not used LinkedIn for much more than hiring employees or getting a job. Not that this is something to sneeze at. Getting a better job can contribute a great deal to personal happiness. So, I was glad to have the opportunity to share at GABA some of the ways LinkedIn can be used to further one’s career. Many of these tips I learned from fellow LinkedIn members, and I also picked up a few new ideas from attendees of the event.
Generally, most in the audience were already quite savvy about completing their profile, getting connected, getting recommendations and joining groups. Some even thought about the keywords to put into their profile, so recruiters would find them. Others used status messages to stay top of mind with their connections. I also learned that many appreciate the ability to view not just job listings, but also the profile of the hiring manager posting the job on LinkedIn. This not only makes it easier to figure out whether or not to apply and how to customize the cover letter, but many are able to learn which of their connections know the hiring manager or someone at the company who can pass on their message “from the inside” to make sure their application gets reviewed with priority.
Based on the feedback, here are the three areas most attendees had not yet used to accelerate their job search. First, few had taken advantage of LinkedIn Answers to showcase their expertise in certain topics. Answering questions in your area of expertise improves your profile because you get an expertise module if the person asking the question selects yours as the best among the answers he has received. Hiring managers can see the question and all the answers, including yours, to get a much deeper look at you than what they could glean from reviewing just your professional history. Similarly, you can integrate presentations, videos and your blog feed into your LinkedIn profile to present yourself in a much more compelling light than applicants with just an old-fashioned resume that lacks external validation. So, take a look at some open questions now.
Second, check who viewed your profile. This gives you a good sense for who is looking for people like you. As you make changes to your profile and increase your activity on LinkedIn, you should see more people looking at your profile, more of the right people looking at your profile, and an improved conversion rate from appearing in search results to getting picked as one of the interesting results. Also, if you applied to company X, whether through LinkedIn or not, it is pretty obvious that someone is considering your application if you see that people from company X viewed your profile. You may also want to change your visibility settings on the page that shows who viewed your profile to show your name and headline when you view the profiles of recruiters, etc. When they see your name and headline in the list of people who viewed their profile, they will probably look at your profile and reach out to you if they find your profile relevant to one of the searches they or their colleagues are working on.
Third, few had explored the Companies section. On company profiles, you not only learn about company revenue, stock charts, company news and companies they acquired. In addition, you can see from which companies they recruit, where employees work after leaving the company and the profiles of former employees, new hires and recently promoted employees. In fact, you can use this to look up your interviewers and contact the person who used to have the position for which you are interviewing. Also, you can search for companies in your area by industry, company size, etc. Best of all, the results are shown by degrees of separation, so when you see a blue “2nd” icon next to a company name, you know that one of your connections knows a current employee of the company, and that your odds of getting a job there are significantly improved over job seekers not yet leveraging their network of contacts on LinkedIn.
The full presentation is here.
To a great job in 2010!
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