LinkedIn Secrets
Finding a job can take time and effort, especially if you are a highly paid professional who fills a specific niche. I made extensive use of LinkedIn during my recent search. Here are some learnings.
Profiles Matter
Your profile deserves careful thought. It is designed and presented like a resume, but whenever you interact with a hiring manager or recruiter they are probably going to ask for a resume. This means that your LinkedIn profile doesn’t need to duplicate your resume.
For a job seeker, the LinkedIn profile should fulfill three main objectives. The first objective is to convince your network contacts to refer you to potential hiring managers. The second is to make yourself discoverable to recruiters who are searching for candidates. And the third objective is to give your other contacts information they need to feel connected to you.
Your profile as a springboard for referrals
Many times during my job search, when I sent a message to an existing connection they viewed my profile. Sometimes they followed up with a message back to me. Other times, silence. I could see that they looked at my profile but they didn’t do anything about it. Since the primary reason I sent messages to those people was to generate job leads, the profile needs to reinforce and expand on the elevator speech in the message. This is especially true for connections who really don’t know you very well, or may not be current with your skills and interests.
Your profile for being discoverable
Recruiters troll for candidates by searching, using job titles and keywords. This means that the headline in your profile must scream what you are looking for. It doesn’t matter what your current title is; the title in your LinkedIn profile should unambiguously state the exact work that you do. Be sure to include applicable keywords throughout your profile. Since the goal is for the recruiter to contact you for more information, including your resume, it isn’t necessary to include all jobs, dates, and other extra information. Think about what data could turn someone off and omit it. They don’t need to know when you graduated, for example; the school name may be enough.
Staying connected using your profile
I’m going to avoid giving advice on this objective because I haven’t learned enough to be confident in what I’d say. The objective is to have your LinkedIn profile speak to your connection when he or she views it. This way they will have a warm reaction and be more likely to help. But this isn’t Facebook, and the first two objectives are more important than this one.
Finding Connections
There are many ways to discover potentially helpful people. The obvious ones include direct searching (by name, company, or keyword), looking at people who connected to existing connections, and exploring the members of special interest groups pertaining to your job category.
I have two tips for making connections. The first is to pay attention to who your existing connections are connecting to. The feed at your LinkedIn home page includes the fact that an existing connection has made a new one (if their privacy settings permit it). You have to look at this page every day to catch the activity otherwise it scrolls by and might be missed. Paying attention to new connections in your network is a great way to keep abreast of who’s doing what. You’ll see when one of your connections is connecting with recruiters (are they looking for a job?), or when a consultant starts making connections at a specific company (has he obtained work there, or is he chasing a project?).
The second tip is to use the “personalize invitation” option when trying to make a new connection. This is only available from someone’s profile page. If you click on the “Connect” button anywhere else then LinkedIn sends that person the generic, “Please add me to your LinkedIn network” message. From the person’s profile, use the down arrow next to the “Send Joe InMail” button to reveal the “Personalize invitation” option. Then you can type in a message to the person to say why you want to connect, and hopefully provide a benefit to the person for accepting the request.
Nudging Connections
Generally speaking, job openings precede filling a job. You have to know when the opening occurs if you want to apply for it, whether the application is formal or informal. If one of your connections gets a call such as, “Do you know someone who can …” and you are qualified then you need for your connection to think of you right then. Your chance of this happening are higher if you’ve had recent contact with your connection. That’s where “nudging” comes in.
One of the features on LinkedIn is Endorsements. You enter a list of Skills into your profile, and your connections get to “Endorse” that you possess the skill. I thought this was silly. I was getting multiple endorsements from the same connection for the same skill. People endorsed me for skills that, I believe, they have no personal knowledge that I possess. With this model how could anyone take endorsements seriously and use them to decide whether to contact me or not?
I’ve decided that the power of Endorsements is to nudge your connections. When you endorse someone for a skill, they receive an email announcing the fact. Nearly a third of the time I’ve done it, the connection has sent me an email thanking me for the endorsement! Others have viewed my profile. With almost no effort, and without having to think of something to say, I’ve nudged my connections!
Another way is to perform an activity that shows up in all of the activity streams on your connections’ home pages. This is as simple as making an edit to your profile or “Liking” someone’s update. You can accomplish more with some work, such as linking — intelligently!—to a pertinent article or blog post.
You might want to make edits to your profile without calling attention to them. In this case, disable notifications from your profile edit page.
Is Someone Looking at Your Profile?
Unless you have a paid account, you can only see people who recently looked at your profile. Many of them will have privacy settings that show only their affiliation or don’t give any information. But others reveal their full identity. Go to your LinkedIn page every day and make note of people who visited you profile. If you fail to do this every day, the views will scroll away and you might miss knowing that an important person paid a visit.
When a stranger visits then asks to connect, you can respond in a few ways. First, decide whether to accept the connection. If you do, use the opportunity to send the person a message. When a new connection is in a position that might help me, I often send a quick and friendly message along the lines, “Hi! What’s your interest?” This usually elicits an immediate response and gets a conversation going.
I’ve also noticed when a colleague of a connection visits my profile. For example, I sent my resume to a friend who works at a company. He didn’t respond, but the next day one of the company’s owners visited my profile. Coincidence? No way. I would have thought my friend gave me the cold shoulder, but with the page visit I knew that he had, in fact, passed my information along and they had some interest.
Be Patient
Don’t rely entirely on LinkedIn for your networking! It’s hard to say how often people log in and check messages or updates, but there are definitely many who visit less than once a month. It might seem like you’ve “networked” with someone by sending them a LinkedIn message. But don’t count it unless they reply or visit your profile. You can often get their personal email address from their profile, so if you have a driving desire to reach someone I recommend finding a direct email and using that approach. The advantage for using LinkedIn is that the message is connected to your profile, making it easier for your connection to refresh their memory of you. But don’t be discouraged if they don’t respond for several weeks.
Do As I Say…
If you visit my LinkedIn profile you may think that I’m not following the advice I’ve just given. Fair enough. As I said I’m wrapping up my own job search and these learnings are only now bubbling to life.
