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Earlier this month, Linkedin released a suite of premium tools targeted to help job seekers.
What do they do?
Help job seekers stand out, making it easier to be noticed
• As a member of the premium account, you will be moved to the top of the hiring manager’s list as a “featured applicant” when you apply to jobs on LinkedIn
• When hiring managers log in to their LinkedIn accounts and view who’s applied for a job, “they’re highlighted and displayed in a more eye-catching way than a non-featured applicant
Communicate with hiring managers, even those outside their network
• The premium account also lets you to send InMail messages directly to hiring managers, even if they reside outside your network
Allow candidates to manage job search more efficiently
• Use the Profile Organizer, which lets you save profiles, add notes to the profiles and keep track of contacts from your job search.
But…
They are not free. They range from $20 – $50/month and for the serious job seeker, if used effectively, they can possibly help you stand out from the crowd.
As of this writing, there are over 55 million people registered on LinkedIn. Clearly, LinkedIn offers significant potential to help in many ways for your job search.
What are you the specific benefits you are looking for in leveraging LinkedIn for your search? Here are some ideas.
Exhibit my expertise
Build new relationships
Reconnect with existing relationships
Permission based communication
Create more exposure to my brand
Effectively communicate
Research tool
A web presence
Find “Hidden” Job Opportunities
It may help you to rank these in terms of their priority to you.
After you do that, watch this video as it helps highlight the path you should consider in finding your next job.
Social Media at its core is literally a “conversation on steroids”. These “conversations” can promote a business, impact business productivity and negatively shock a business too. Who’s already conversing online? Literally all the key parties to one’s business success – prospects, customers, employees, business partners, and most importantly competitors.
Since social media is about new ways of communication, and communication is the foundation for relationship building, do you know where to begin to properly launch a relationship-building campaign?
Step #1 – Start by clearly identifying your strategy – What is it that you expect to achieve? Direct selling is not something to shoot for. Focus more communicating with early to mid stage prospects.
Step #2 – Now clearly articulate your Brand
Work in your brand and most importantly, make sure it is concise. The key is for you to be able to articulate your value and your expertise “at a glance”. We literally have 3 seconds to “hook” someone’s interest, which is roughly a quick glance. Don’t believe me? Next time you are doing a search on Google, see how much time you give for each of the results that show up. My bet is that you quickly glance at them until you find one that “hooks” you and you click on it.
Step #3 – Maximize Your Profile – Spend time making sure that you’ve set up a Profile that will effectively communicate for you 24 hours/day 7/days a week. Download the free “Quick-Link” graphic from the CFOStrategist Blog to have a great overview on this process – www.CFOStrategist.com
Step #4 – Properly Participate – You want to communicate with prospects as well as with your growing group of connections. Be proactive in your searches. Identify companies you want to connect with. Identify the key people in those companies and look for “natural” ways to interact with them across LinkedIn and other social media platforms. As long as you add value to them and avoid “selling them”, your relationship building efforts will be more effective.
The cornerstone for your success starts with ensuring your understanding of what successful networking really means. It is not the sleazy concept of dropping off a business card and then racing to someone else to repeat the process over and over again. That type of person merely wants you to hear about them. They could care less about spending time to get to know you. Pretty shallow, right? Why would you do business with someone who doesn’t care about you? If that is your idea of networking, don’t even bother with LinkedIn.
Networking is about building relationships and getting to know the other person and how you might be able to contribute to their success. Successful networkers build their own credibility through their actions, which in turn builds a comfort level with the other party. This increased level of comfort leads to a stronger relationship. So, would you rather have business dealings with someone who is shallow or someone you’ve developed a relationship with? Relationship building should be the focus of your perspective and participation in LinkedIn.
Here’s a LinkedIn Success Story that was posted on the LinkedIn Blog. Some of them are more relevant than others… but usually worth spending a couple of minutes listening to…
The old cliché is that success is not based on what you know, but rather, who you know. Understanding your online identity is critical to creating success, and LinkedIn is currently one of the more powerful tools that can help you. The challenge is how to learn the most effective ways to use LinkedIn without wasting time navigating the help functions, the online forums or Googling the gurus.
In typical day-to-day, face-to-face networking, when people are asked about their usage of LinkedIn, it seems that most people share the same experience. They sign up for LinkedIn, gather some contacts, and search out people they may know from schools, prior employers, or from professional associations. Once they’ve tapped that out, they are lost as to what to do next or how to realize any benefit from being on LinkedIn.
As successful professionals, your time is precious and what you choose to focus on must provide you with an effective result. Therefore, let’s jump in with some quick and immediate tips to help you dramatically improve your understanding of the LinkedIn experience.
Social networking is one of the most popular activities amongst Internet surfers around the world. The sheer number of social networking sites really shows how popular they are and more networks continue to rise and evolve. LinkedIn and Facebook are two of the earlier networks introduced in 2003 and 2004 respectively and expanded quickly just years later. Both networks now have millions of registered users, yet have different goals for their members. The two networks also differ in features as well making it necessary for some to join both networks.
Objectives
Facebook is one of the many social networking sites that aim to bring people of all ages closer to each other. New members have their own profile where contacts that they know personally can be added so they become part of the network. As contacts, information can be exchanged and various social activities can be engaged online.
LinkedIn takes the same objectives of Facebook and restricts them to professional users only. This is why Facebook has many more registered members than LinkedIn, but LinkedIn still manages to reach over 40 million members. LinkedIn aims to let professions connect with one another and engage in business activities and discussions. Usually members add others that they know personally, former colleagues, or current officemates.
Features
Facebook allows different types of multimedia content to be shared including videos and pictures for entertainment purposes. LinkedIn doesn’t have many media sharing features although it still allows profile pictures to be uploaded for professional usage. Blog entries may also be linked to the profile although it is recommended that business blogs are linked.
Facebook is very famous for their databases of thousands of applications created by independent developers and are often used to make social interactions more interesting and fun. LinkedIn has its own version of interacting that is interesting in its own right with the Q&A module. The function works similarly to Yahoo! Answers where people can post business related questions allowing other people in the network to answer.
Similarities
Because they are both social networking sites, Facebook and LinkedIn have similar features, but are used differently. For instance, both Facebook and LinkedIn have the groups feature which allows members to create their own group based on a theme and have other members join the group to find a common ground. Facebook serves as the general purpose while LinkedIn is more inclined to business discussions. Custom web pages for the purpose of promoting products, services, or events can also be made in Facebook while LinkedIn users can create company profiles which can be used for hiring jobseekers doubling the function of LinkedIn as a job directory.
To sum things up, Facebook is the larger network where everyone is invited to create their own profiles, socialize, and possibly engage in business related activities. Internet marketers see opportunities to promote their websites as well. LinkedIn is a better place to do business activities because it encourages professionals to join resulting to more productive ideas to be shared and less emphasis on personal features.
LinkedIn is the best social network to be in when professional networking is the main agenda. With millions of people around the world active everyday in the network, LinkedIn has devised new ways for people to access their LinkedIn accounts and make sure that they stay in touch with their colleagues and prospects no matter where they are. Even without a computer or laptop, it is now possible to keep LinkedIn close to you as long as you have a mobile phone that is wirelessly connected to the Internet.
LinkedIn iPhone Application
The iPhone gained a lot of popularity after developers started to create special applications that are designed to make their web services easier to access taking full advantage of the screen size and multi-touch features. LinkedIn followed by introducing their own iPhone application on August 21st boasting a similar interface as the iPhone contacts. Many of the core features in LinkedIn can be used from the iPhone including the contact searching which is easily accessible from the bottom panel.
In addition, connections can be viewed in a minimalistic way by pressing the “Connections” icon on the bottom of the screen along with other contacts that these people are connected to. It is also possible to add new connections if new prospects or acquaintances were found via search or other profile. Any updates posted by contacts are reflected in the main window as well. If there are contacts that are willing to introduce you with others, you can review those introductions from your iPhone. By pressing the “Invite” button on the upper right of the screen, you can invite new people to LinkedIn the same way you could in the computer. Currently the iPhone application comes in English, Spanish, French, German, Japanese, and Chinese with more languages being supported in the future.
LinkedIn Mobile
So far, there are no other mobile specific LinkedIn applications. This means that non-iPhone users must rely on the LinkedIn mobile site which can be accessed at http://m.linkedin.com. You will be immediately presented with a login form where you type your e-mail and password and optionally choose the language. Once you are logged in, you can immediately search for a contact or choose 7 other options that are part of LinkedIn’s main features. You can broadcast your status message to let others know where you are or you can browse your address book to obtain information that may not be stored in your phone book. Lastly, you can invite and view the public profiles of colleagues. You can check out the other features by visiting the URL using your browser even if you are not using a mobile phone.
The features of LinkedIn mobile are actually similar to the ones found in the iPhone. What the iPhone really excels in is the overall layout of the functions and convenience in choosing contacts and connections. iPhone users benefit from the best possible mobile LinkedIn experience, but other mobile users are not left in the dark.
LinkedIn has all of the core features that you can find in any social networking site including the ability to search the database for other people that you can link to or add as contacts in order to grow your network and establish closer ties. Unlike social networking services, you are not necessarily adding these people as “friends”. Although you may find some professionals that are actually your friends in real life, LinkedIn’s idea of networking is bringing coworkers and colleagues closer together. Any other people that you do not know very well can be considered as prospects and they can be useful in hiring new people in your business or getting opt-ins for your online site. All it takes is finding these prospects using the tools in LinkedIn.
Using the Advanced Search Option
This is the most common method as it can return lots of different prospects all by inputting a few commands. You can either refer to your prospect list that you created through other marketing methods and search for their full names to see if they have LinkedIn profiles or you can define a target group to get a list of the people that match that group. Spend more time with the target group as different profiles may have similar groups that are written in a different way. For instance, you if you are planning to look for marketing directors, try to look for marketing managers as well.
Exploring Groups
Many members in LinkedIn join groups to participate in themed discussions or simply try to get more profile exposure. Like searching using the advanced search option, try to explore groups that match your target group for better chances of quality prospects that are interested with whatever you have to offer in your LinkedIn profile.
Browsing other Profiles
You can use the first two methods to grow your network. After you have a few prospects in your network, you can start browsing their profiles and see their connections. The people that they are connected with may turn out to be prospects as well since it is likely that connected people have the same interests or are in the same company. Take a good look at their profiles before making any decisions.
Keeping an Eye on Network Updates
Once you start to browse other profiles through connections, you will see many more ways to grow your network. The more people that you have connected in your network, the more network updates you will see. This is very important in finding quality prospects because you can take advantage much quicker than others if you keep a close eye on the updates. Be on the lookout for individuals that change positions so you can move on in and make a proposal if the changed position is something that you can take advantage of.
With over 40 million members registered in LinkedIn around the world, it is likely for prospects to wind up using any of the methods. Having a large network always gives greater possibilities so try to build you network first if you ever have problems finding prospects in LinkedIn.
