Harness the Power of LinkedIn Five Ways to Make the Most of LinkedIn.

Harness the Power of LinkedIn

Five Ways to Make the Most of LinkedIn

Rebecca BurwellStaff Career Advisor

• Services (free! to all USG staff):– Workshops (see Winter 2012 schedule)– One-on-one appointments for:

• Career assessments• Career and educational planning• Interview skills• Resumes, cover letters

– Make appointments through careeraction.uwaterloo.ca


LinkedIn: The basics

• Largest and strongest business network in the world

• Not designed for general public• Gives us a means to see our friends’

networks, as well as their friends’ networks• A good basic tutorial:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IzT3JVUGUzM




Three degrees of connections

1. First-degree: your immediate network; people you know personally

2. Second-degree: the friends of your friends

3. Third-degree: friends of your friends of your friends

Resulting in a large chain of connections and network members! (100 connections leads to 921,000 connections)


Three basic steps to use:

1. Set up your online identity

2. Build your network

3. Gradually take advantage of the opportunities that can most benefit you or that most greatly interest you


The investment

• Philosophy behind LinkedIn is the concept of “pay it forward”…i.e., offer more than you ask for

• You get out of it what you put into it• It takes time to use it to its full potential


Paid versus free account

• Paid account provides ability to:– Send message to anyone through in-mail– View more profile information of people not in

your network– See who has viewed your profile


To learn more about use

• The online Learning Centre provides basics on setting up and managing a profile, privacy settings, etc

• LinkedIn 101 is a free webinar that is offered every Wednesday– See http://learn.linkedin.com/training/


1. Build an online reputation

• Eliminates need for your own site or blog• Do this through:

– Your profile– Participating in ‘Answers’– Using applications such as Reading List or

SlideShare


Your profile

• An awesome profile will:– Be 100% complete– Balance personality and professionalism– Be updated regularly (‘living and breathing’)– Be full of strong keywords and avoid jargon


Keywords

• Determining keywords:– http://www.quintcareers.com/identifying_resu

me_keywords.html– Wordle!

• www.wordle.net• Generates ‘word clouds’ that give greater

prominence to words that appear more frequently in the source text


http://www.quintcareers.com/identifying_resume_keywords.html

http://www.quintcareers.com/identifying_resume_keywords.html

http://www.wordle.net/

Wordle example


Profile sections

• Multiple sections to fill in• Sections of note:

– Summary section; two components:• Professional experience and goals• Specialties

– Recommendations (3)


Professional experience and goals

• One paragraph• “who, what, goals” format• Avoid cliché phrases (“excellent

communication skills”)


Professional experience and goals example

Internet and eBay guru with a software development background and a yearn for Entrepreneurship. Fourteen years experience selling on eBay, six years experience with software project management as well as software development in languages like C, C++, and Java. Author of LinkedIn for Dummies & Web Stores Do It Yourself for Dummies. Co-author of 5 books, including eBay Your Business, Facebook Advertising for Dummies, Starting an iPhone Application Business for Dummies, How to Sell Anything on Amazon.com, and Starting an Online Business All-in-One Desk Reference for Dummies. Excellent public speaker and an Educational Specialist Trained by eBay. Former Lead instructor for eBay at the Learning Annex in New York City, Los Angeles, and San Diego. Consultant to small businesses and entrepreneurs on matters of eBay and e-commerce.


Specialties section

– Specialties within your industry– Skill level above beginner– Good example:

• Selling on eBay, building websites, Selling on Amazon.com, giving lectures, teaching seminars, writing books, software development, software testing, software design, software maintenance, e-commerce, WebSphere, SQL, Java.


Participating in ‘Answers’

• LinkedIn ‘Answers’ is a Q & A platform• Build your reputation by responding to

others’ questions – even become known as a subject matter expert

• You gain exposure each time you respond to a question

• Try to answer at least one question per month


Finding questions to respond to

• Questions are presented in order of how many degrees the poster is away from you

• Or do advanced search of questions or browse by category


Becoming an ‘top expert’

• When questioners choose another user’s answer as best, that user gains points of expertise

• These points rank members on the Answers leaderboard called “This Week’s Top Experts”…particularly good exposure

• But…top experts may answer up to 50 questions per day!


Reading List

• One of LinkedIn’s apps• Creates your own personal bookshelf that

will reside on your profile• Include intriguing books you’re reading,

have read, or intend to read• Look good by sharing valuable information

on books of interest to your target group


SlideShare

• Another of LinkedIn’s apps• Allows you to upload a PowerPoint

presentation to showcase work you’ve done


2. Grow your network

• Goal is to capture as much of your professional network as possible in the form of first-degree connections

• When sending an invitation to connect, make sure to avoid the “canned” invitation request (“I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn”)


Ways to grow your network

– Have LinkedIn search your email contacts– Search by name or company and add present

contacts/old acquaintances– Get creative:

• Search for people you have something uniquely in common with (ex, programming in PHP)

• Mine your contacts for other contacts• Connect with uber connectors


Quality or quantity?

– No right or wrong, though LinkedIn was designed to cultivate the real quality connections that people have

– Random connections make it difficult to tap the real power and potential of LinkedIn


3. Find work

• Happens in one of three ways:– You use LinkedIn to actively network and

uncover hidden job opportunities – You search for openings under the Jobs tab– You get recruited through an employer who’s

looking for people with your qualifications (“chance favours the prepared mind”)

• ¾ of employers are using LinkedIn to conduct personalized recruiting


Find work (cont)

• Using LinkedIn actively buys you job security…i.e., you’re “digging your well before you’re thirsty”

• Strive to be active in the LinkedIn groups and industry groups that employers are likely to be looking at, particularly if you’re in the job market


Find work (cont)

• Users with 20+ connections are more than 34 times more likely to be approached for work than those with 5 connections

• Remember that employers also use social networks to screen people…they will be checking your profile and verifying statements to look for inconsistencies or glaring problems


4. Research

• What can be researched:– People; some examples:

• Who can you commute to work with?• How many project managers are in Waterloo?• What kind of recommendations does your potential

new boss have?• Find info on co-workers or sales prospects• Find people to conduct information interviews with• Research peers to get ideas for your own PD


Research (cont)

– Companies/Industries:• Profiles available for thousands of companies

(stock value, jobs available, etc)• Guage the health of a company by checking out

who’s “abandoning ship”• What skills/qualifications/certifications are most

popular within a certain industry


Research (cont)

• Company Buzz– A new app that taps into blog and twitter

entries that people are sending out about companies and industries; search for company you’re interested in


5. Get advice

• ‘Pick the brains’ of millions through Answers, the Q&A platform

• Post a question on any business-related or LinkedIn topic

• Stays posted for seven days• Most questions get 1-5 responses, but 10+

not unusual for an intriguing question


Get advice (cont)

• Make sure to post a real question and not just an opinion you’re seeking discussion or agreement on (such as political opinion)

• Come up with a question that a real expert can answer

• Questions should be brief and worded clearly


Thank you

• Enjoy the rest of the conference!

• Rebecca Burwell• [email protected]• Ext. 31003


mailto:[email protected]

Harness the Power of LinkedIn Five Ways to Make the Most of LinkedIn.

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