LinkedIn...Now What Do I Do?

"I have a LinkedIn profile but no idea what to do with it."

"There is no time for LinkedIn in my life."

"I need a career change and have applied to 100's of jobs online, but there is nothing out there."

Recently I was working with a young man who was desperate to get out of his current job. My first question was, "What have you done so far to find work?"

His response was a combination of all of the above statements rolled into his three-minute overview of what he'd done.

My response to him, "What you have been doing has been a big waste of time."

Pause for effect...     "What?"

And then the session began.

Rule number 1, people hire people. This young man was applying for jobs every night, literally every night, all night until he went to bed. He was SO BUSY that he felt he was being productive.

Rule number 2, see Rule number 1.

Most people spend 80-90% of their time online and less than 20% of their time talking to people. My recommendation is to flip those two.

So how does LinkedIn help you in Rule number 1?

And what can you DO on LinkedIn?

You can use LinkedIn, as much or as little as you want, as a tool to:

• create an online professional presence
• identify people who can help you
• discover new career pathways you had not thought of before
• learn about an industry and keywords used in that industry
• generate ideas for jobs
• research companies
• improve your own LI profile by checking out other peoples profiles

The power of LinkedIn is that in our digital age, you must have a professional online presence, even if you don't DO anything else on LinkedIn, you need to have a way for people to learn about the "professional you.”  Even in those industries that are NOT really using LinkedIn very much, you should have:

• a profile that allows people to see you are indeed a professional
• a vision of where you are going
• skills they might be interested in

For you minimalists, once you create your profile (see my blog for what I think is a minimum. BLOG), you can walk away from it and merely update it occasionally. 

For you others, read on.

Back to the young man I was working with above.

His efforts were 90% in communicating ‘computer to computer, ’ and we discussed how he needs to flip his percentages to more like 70-80% of his time focused on communicating with real people. The rest of his time should be on researching,

• "What job am I looking for?"
• "Who out there can help me?"
• "What keywords are used in this industry?", and
• "What companies are out there?"

Here are four ways you can use LI to find work by communicating with real live people.

1. CONTACTS

Go through your LI contacts. Who have you not talked to in awhile and might be able to help you in some way? Maybe you had the same major. Or they are doing something you find interesting. Or are they in an industry that could be a good move for you.

- Call them up or email them for a time to chat face-to-face, by phone, or Skype / Facetime.

Note: I do not recommend using LinkedIn messages (unless they are active on LI they might never read it). Go ‘old school’ and call them on the phone because they are a friend of yours, a 'warm connection'. You can always google their company and get a phone number.

2. ALUMNI

On LinkedIn, search for your college or university and select SEE ALUMNI. Presto! You have a database of 121,000+ people here at your fingertips.

Click on the "NEXT>" link on the far right side to view WHAT THEY STUDIED.

On the next screen below you can see that 3,313 people studied Psychology. If you studied Psychology, click on that major and peruse some of the profiles that will appear below this chart. (You can search other majors by using the "+ Add" next to What They Studied). Look for current jobs and their path to their current job.

If someone has an interesting position or career pathway, reach out to them and see if he or she will give you some advice on how to get into this field/ occupation/industry.

LinkedIn is the tool to help you identify people and for idea generation. It is indeed always easier to reach out to alumni of your college, they are your 'warm connections.'

Note: You do not have to only look at your college, you can do this activity for any college. Reaching out to people is more difficult, but it can be a good way of generating some new thinking on your part. 

3. GROUPS

If your college has an Alumni Group in LI, join it. As you can see in my screenshot of the Oregon State University group below, there are 12,797 people in this group. Click on the "ASK to JOIN" button in the upper right corner. Once you are IN the group, you can ‘message’ anyone there that might be helpful to you in your job changing process.

As you can see, in these three steps the theme is ‘people hire people’ and ‘people help people.' Don’t spend all your time clicking on websites for job openings. Spend at least 70-80% talking with people that can help give you inside information about how to get into this industry or company. Eventually, there will be a job at the end of this process… a slower feeling process because you are not applying to 100 positions, but a more informative process.

Note: There are 1000's of other groups formed around various topics. Search for topics, industries, or organizations of interest and consider joining them..., you can always unsubscribe.

4. RESEARCH

Most companies have profiles on LI with information about latest news, career opportunities, and the ability to "follow" them for updates. Go to your search bar and search away.

On the right side of your screen. You will see you have any connections working there. A great tool for identifying potential informational interviews.

You will also see a "People also viewed" section. (When you are on the company page look in the right-hand column). This is a GREAT way to expand your list of potential companies.

Of course, there is so much more on LinkedIn that cannot be covered here, but I hope this has given you some helpful information on how to "kick start" using LinkedIn as a tool to find work and network with like-minded people.

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Jim Peacock is the Principal at Peak-Careers Consulting and writes a monthly newsletter for career practitioners. Peak-Careers offers discussion-based online seminars for career practitioners focused on meeting continuing education needs for CCSP, GCDF and BCC certified professionals as well as workshops for career practitioners and individual career coaching.

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