How to Network on LinkedIn for Career Advice
To be honest, networking sounds like a total nightmare for me. I picture awkward social events where people are just hunting for titles and connections in a crowd of faceless bodies. Luckily, that’s not what successful networking looks like, and there are lots of ways you can use LinkedIn to grow personally, not just expand your network for the sake of it.
This month, I’ve set a goal for myself to expand my knowledge and skills in startup analytics. Although there is plenty for me to learn on my own, I also wanted to seek out people with relevant experience to get their insight and advice on how to proceed. I put my fears of networking behind me and dove into LinkedIn to see what I could do.
Here’s a summary of what I learned through my first ventures with LinkedIn.
Why Use LinkedIn?
If you aren’t on LinkedIn already, chances are you should be. It’s indisputably the farthest-reaching professional networking platform available, and there are many potential benefits to you if you use it thoughtfully.
In the case of looking for career advice, I chose to use LinkedIn for a few reasons.
- Searchability- LinkedIn makes it easy to find the types of people you want to connect with, and you can learn more about individuals' work experience by viewing profiles.
- Ease of access- The messenger option saves you the time of searching for email addresses.
- Transparency- Unlike email, the recipient can easily learn more about you by viewing your profile.
How to Find Good Connections
There are many ways you can search for quality connections that have a higher likelihood of offering you relevant advice.
A good starting point is always your current network. Even if your current connections don’t have the experience you’re looking for, there’s a good chance that someone in their network does. People are more likely to connect with you and return your message if they see you have connections in common.
You can also utilize the search bar in LinkedIn to search for people by job title, and then refine your search further with filters like ‘connections’, ‘location’, and ‘current companies’.
Another solid option is to find specific companies that interest you and view the ‘people’ segment of their page. You can find people with job titles that interest you and learn more about what it’s actually like to work at that company.
How to Reach Out
No matter how you find potential connections, you should take a minute to make sure you reach out to them in a thoughtful manner. No one wants to be spammed with generic connection requests from people they don’t know, and if you blast out requests to anyone and everyone, LinkedIn may penalize your account for spam.
That being said, what are the best ways to connect? I did some reading on the topic to make sure I covered my bases before connecting. This article from HuffPost and these tips from Nutshell helped me figure out the best approach. Some common themes in the tips I found:
- Always send your own message, not the generic connection request message.
- Make your message personal- include something about them that interests you, or something you have in common.
- Do mention mutual connections, or ask a mutual connection to introduce you.
- Include the reason why you’re connecting
- Make it easy to reply- people are busy and probably don’t have time to figure out how to help you. Ask for something specific, like a short call or a link to recommended resources.
Before you draft your connection messages, take some time to make sure your own profile is as complete as possible, clean, and professional. If you’ve spent time looking through other profiles, you should have an idea of what stands out and is helpful to have on your profile. Even if you send a great message to someone, they might not connect if they don’t feel it’s from a person they can trust.
If You Get a Response
Once you’ve written your messages and sent out your connection invitations, it’s time to hurry and wait for any responses. If you don’t get a reply, it’s important not to take it personally. Some people may not be regularly active on the platform, or they may be swamped with messages and choose to only respond to people they know.
Even if you can’t know the reason for the silence, it’s good practice to review to find anything you could have done differently that might have elicited a response.
For example, I didn’t hear back from someone that a mutual connection had recommended to me. I reviewed the message and realized that even though I mentioned our connection, I didn’t make it very personal and it may have come across as ‘so and so told me to connect with you so here I am’. Looking at it again, I could see why someone wouldn’t be excited to connect with me over a message like that. Instead, I could have focused more on why their work/projects interested me.
If you do hear back from your connections, that’s great! But it doesn’t end there. This article has some great tips on using LinkedIn well, and following up well with your connections is a must. Always start with a genuine thank you for connecting and any advice or resources shared. If you want to learn more from them, try to keep the conversation going, just be respectful of their time. The best way you can get long-term value from your new connections is by staying in touch with them. Actively post on LinkedIn, and share helpful resources you come across with your connections.
If all goes well, you’ll be able to find out more about the career you’re interested in and build a strong network at the same time! In my experience this month, I sent 10 connection requests and so far have heard back from three of them. Although I’d still love to hear back from the others, I’ve already gotten some valuable tips from my new connections on recommended tools and courses to check out. Taking these first steps has also helped me get over my apprehensions over networking and reaching out to strangers.
