Tips 11-22
LinkedIn Tips
Get Your Profile Up to Snuff
Before you can really start networking on LinkedIn, you want to make sure your profile is the strongest it can be—that way you look seriously impressive as you’re connecting with new people and looking at new jobs. If you feel like yours still needs some work, check out our tips for LinkedIn profile success.
Come Up With a Plan
We know—very few people check LinkedIn every day in the same way they check Facebook or Twitter, but it’s beneficial when searching for jobs to be updating it fairly regularly. To help keep yourself on track, come up with a plan for how often you’ll interact with LinkedIn.
(Mostly) Only Connect With People You Know
For the most part, you should only send people requests to connect on LinkedIn if you’ve interacted with them in some other way before—whether you worked together at previous jobs, met at a networking event last night, or sent an email back and forth. There are, of course, a few exceptions to this rule, such as if it’s someone in the industry you’re interested in that you’re seeking an informational interview with or it’s someone you’d really, really like to work with.
Send Personalized Messages to Anyone You Don’t Know
Any time you add someone new on LinkedIn, it sends them the generic “I’d like to add you on LinkedIn” script. This isn’t ideal, but it’s okay for people who are familiar with you. But if you’re reaching out cold to someone you’d like to meet? You should personalize that invitation to give context as to why you’re reaching out. LinkedIn has, oddly, made this more difficult to do, but if you go to said person’s profile and click the little arrow by “send InMail,” you can choose to personalize the invitation.
Just Don’t Connect With the Hiring Manager
At least not until a decision has been made. “[The hiring manager] is interviewing not only you, but many others, trying to determine who will be the best person for the job and the company. Connecting over LinkedIn before a decision has been made can come off as both pushy and over-confident—like you’re certain that you’ll be the one who’s working closely with the interviewer over all those other candidates.” And if you don’t get the job? Then it’s okay to connect with the interviewer (sending a nice, professional note, of course!)—you know, in case something comes up.
Don’t Forget the Groups!
For many, groups are kind of the weird underbelly of LinkedIn; everyone knows they exist, most people are members of at least some, but very few people actively use them. If you’re a job-seeker, it’s time to change that! Joining groups can really help you connect with new professionals (in a more natural way than just coldly reaching out) and get more engaged with discussions in your industry.
Up Your LinkedIn SEO
As a job seeker on LinkedIn, the best thing that can happen is that a recruiter or hiring manager finds you and reaches out. So you should be doing everything you can to attract them to your profile! Chase Executive Partners next blog will walk you through the steps of making your profile more findable, clickable, and likable—making you more hirable. (Hint: A stellar headline and carefully selected keywords are, well, key.)
Actually Connect With People You Don’t Know
Whether you reached out to them cold, they reached out to you, or you met in a group, you’ve now connected on LinkedIn with someone you’ve never interacted with in real life. Now what? Hop on a phone call, agree to meet up for coffee, or just send a few messages back and forth: Whatever it is, getting to know this stranger a little will make this connection really worth something—not just another number in your count.
- Reconnect With People You Do Know
You know you should be staying in touch with your network. But it takes a lot of time! So use LinkedIn to make it a little easier on yourself. Did an old colleague just post that she got a new job? Comment to send her a congratulations! Did someone you met at an event just post a great article he wrote? Write back giving your thoughts on the piece. It’s a small gesture from you, but it will help keep you top-of-mind.
- Tap Into Your Connections—Without Annoying Them
We all know you can use LinkedIn to see mutual connections between you and someone you’re hoping to meet—meaning theoretically you could have that person intro you. But you don’t want to annoy your contacts by asking for intros too often or assuming they’d be willing to help you out (especially if you, um, don’t actually know them that well).
- Keep Your Search Under the Radar
Unless you’re very publicly job searching (i.e., you don’t currently have a job), you don’t exactly want people to see all your activity on LinkedIn. And while your job-searching activity (such as viewing companies or applying to jobs) is automatically private, it would still look pretty fishy if your network saw that you suddenly updated everything in your profile. So, when you’re editing your profile, look down the right sidebar until you see the “Notify your network?” section, and flip the button to “off.”
- Hack Your Insights Graph
You know that little graph you can see when you click on how many people have viewed your profile in the past week? Not only can you see how many people checked you out (and, in some cases, who), you can see how many actions you made in a given week. Now, when you tweak your LinkedIn strategy, you can gauge how well it’s working by seeing who you’re attracting to your profile with each change.”
Later in the week we will bring you Part 3 – Tips on job hunting on Twitter.
