How do I effectively use LinkedIn to find a job?
Most of the answers to this question are relatively generic. I’m going to show you some ways that can help you quickly find a job using LinkedIn. These are the things I have done in the past that have worked for me.
In short, for every $50,000 you want to make it’s going to make approximately 3 months. I was able to do make that happen in 60 days through a variety of things.
First of all, I’m assuming that you’re going to have LinkedIn set up already, so it’s not like you just got one today. So, this is how I would attack this, basics first.
I’ve answered a similar question already, and I think that’s a good place to start. Here is the link to it:
Christien Louviere’s answer to How can I improve my LinkedIn profile to get a data scientist job?
If you go ahead and read my answer above, you will see that the important basics are:
- Headline — a short description of what you do
- Career Summary — experience
- Public Profile — make sure everyone can see your profile
- Recognizable URL — change the URL of your profile so it contains your name/brand
Besides the advice above, here are some things you should pay attention to when using LinkedIn to find a job:
- Search for a job
Go to the job search, and the first thing to do is type in what you want to do. For example, I want to work as an Enterprise Sales Executive for big companies in Atlanta.
I should first start looking at where I fit amongst the applicants. It’s showing me 76 results and it’s telling me I’m in the top 25% for this job — that’s okay. Top 50% for this job is not good at all — basically, it’s terrible. Don’t waste you time on the jobs you have no opportunity at. The jobs where I’m in the top 12% or 10% applicants, would be a perfect fit for me, and that’s what I’m looking for.
Don’t spend time with these top 50%, you probably won’t get a shot at them because these people are most possibly making quick decisions.
2. Apply for the job
Now, let’s pick the job were I’m amongst the top 10% applicants, apply for it, and go through the formal process. Don’t bother going to their website unless they specifically direct you to it, otherwise it’s a waste of time.
3. Linked Helper
Then, we’re going to use a program called LinkedHelper which is a third party application — it’s only $13 per month, and if you’re not willing to invest, I think you’re going to have a very hard time with personal brading and finding a good job.
So, next go to Sign In to LinkedIn — Sales Navigator. Let’s go ahead and search for leads. Type in the company name — eg. TopTal — for the function we’ll choose HR. The cool thing about this is that you also know you will be working in sales, so you might put sales in as well.
We hit search, and in the separate window you see Linked Helper down there, so scroll and find ‘Profile Extractor’. What you want to do is hit ‘Collect’ and the program collects the profiles automatically.
Next, ‘Collect Contacts from the Search’ — we want to create a list, as a sample job search extract and hit the ‘Extract’ button. The program will then visit the profiles for you and create a .csv file with all their information. The key information that we’re trying to get out of it is their LinkedIn URL (not their email address).
The next action window from the LinkedHelper tells you when the next action is going to happen because it’s tricking the LinkedIn algorithm into thinking it’s an actual person. What’s happening is LinkedHelper is going to visit the next profile every 10 seconds and extract all needed information. So, I’m going to stop this, then export the file and download as a .csv.
4. Rocket Reach
Next, we will take the .csv and and upload it into a program called Rocket Reach. The program then matches LinkedIn and email-address with other social profiles of the people. However, we only want them matched to Facebook. Why? We’re going to take that file and download after you’ve matched it, and take it to the Facebook Ads Manager.
5. Facebook Ads Manager
Go ahead and click ‘Create’ campaign, ads set, traffic offer, audience, etc. Go ahead and jump to creating an audience — click ‘Create New Audience’ and do a custom audience. Next, upload that .csv file that you just matched with Rocket Reach and watch Facebook do its magic. Now, it’s uploading and matching profiles. We’ll basically be sending personal ads to recruiters in the space.
Instead of just making a file of list of TopTal recruiters, I would do this for every job and that way you’re building the same audience on Facebook — and when you create the ads you can make them specific to that individual opportunity.
6. Creating the ad
Be careful with creating the ad — choose a head-shot image that is clean and professional. If you don’t have a good head-shot, I would recommend going with theHead Shot Truck Company — a really cool concept, they have trucks designed as fully equiped studios and do a great job with headshots (they did mine). And then if you need somebody, go visit We Work — it’s shared office space that’s got million locations because their valuation is ridiculous. They’re killin’ it!
Next, your website URL is going to be your LinkedIn URL. For your text, I would adjust it to fit the job specifications, e.g. ‘TopTal needs to hire menow’. What’s going to happen is, let’s say you have 100 people from TopTal in your custom audience, they’re going to see this ad in their feed and when they hit the ‘Learn More’ button, they’re going right to your profile.
7. Budget
With budgeting, try $5-$10 a day, or whatever you feel comfortable with. Run it for a week and see what happens. I usually do ads for 48h, evaluate how it’s performing and throw more money at the ones that are doing great. You can set your daily budget at whatever you wish, I think the minimum is $5.
So, that’s the big first part of what we’re doing: find the desired job, use sales navigator and search for people in charge, run Linked Helper to find URLs, match them using Rocket Reach, make a custom audience and the ads for each job.
8. The last step
So, now you’re running the ads. The last step of the process is to use Linked Helper again. Let’s get back to our search in the Sales Navigator. Click ‘Collect again’ and let it run over night. Now go ahead and hit ‘Visit’, and it starts visiting next profiles you have, What’s going to happen, is the HR people will see you in their Facebook feed, and when they see who searched for them and visited their profiles, they’re going to see you there as well.
Don’t get overwhelmed and intimidated by the process, once you get into it you’ll see it’s super simple for our purposes.
Essentially, you need to do basically the 1% of nobody else is doing. Everybody else is going to follow all these other generic answers — email and apply to the job through the company’s website — which is a waste of time. You got to be a little bit smarter than everybody else, and showing that kind of initiative is going to make you look great in people’s eyes!
Good luck!
