4-Part Strategy: How to Use LinkedIn to Get the Job You Want
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If you’re like me, you don’t feel satisfied sitting around with a pretty LinkedIn profile waiting for recruiters to email you out of the blue. (Although it’s nice, it’s simply not a strategy.)

You need to be more proactive, more in control. This post will show you how to get job interviews by next week by directly reaching out to new employers.

Warning: Before you start reaching out to potential new employers on LinkedIn, your profile needs to look perfect. Your profile is your first impression.

If you’re stuck on this part, I suggest investing in a professional LinkedIn profile writer to get it done for you. That way you can focus on the relationship building, rather than the profile writing.

Step 1: Build Your List of Potential Employers

Everytime I demonstrate this to an audience, we all learn something new.
  1. Visit LinkedIn and scroll over the Interests menu and click on Companies
  2. Choose the middle tab to Search
  3. Pick the location, industry(ies) and company size you are most interested in
  4. Play with the other filters until you narrow your list down to 10 or less
Did you discover companies you never heard of before? Cool, huh!?!

Step 2: Understand Their Needs

You will be requesting informational interviews in Step 3. So in order to prepare for those, you should do some research into what those companies are facing right now so you can ask intelligent questions later.

If you’ve ever been in a position to hire, as a business owner or manager, then you know how frustrating it can be when someone wastes your time in a meeting.

I had to hire a new customer service rep for my LinkedIn Profile Writing Service. Most of the candidates showed little preparation for our first phone interview. When one person bothered to watch my sales video, read my customer reviews, etc., they really stood out to me.

Be that person.

Use LinkedIn’s company pages to learn what products they sell. Read industry related blog posts and articles from Alltop.com. Join industry specific groups on LinkedIn and see what people are talking about.

Bottom line: Be curious about them, their company, and their industry.

Step 3: Informational Interview

Don’t skip this. If you do, then you’ll be like those other 118 job seekers competing for the positions you want.

A great tool for finding informational interview sources are your college alumni. Visit LinkedIn’s Alumni Search Tool, and use it to identify 3-5 potential alums working in the industry or company you are targeting.

Using one of my LinkedIn inMail scripts, or one from 100 Conversations for Career Success, request informational interviews from these non-decision makers.

When your profile is targeted and well written, those info sources are more likely to take you seriously and agree to the meeting.

Step 4: Query the Decision Maker

Going back to the list of target companies from Step 1, then do an advanced people search to find decision makers.
  1. In LinkedIn’s home page, click the word Advanced next to the top search bar
  2. Enter one of the companies on your target list
  3. Enter the job title of someone is a position to hire you, like VP or manager (be sure to select Current)
  4. Find 2-3 possible contacts, read their profiles and join their groups before inMailing
Be prepared when you send these emails. Read my post, “4 Essentials for Reaching out to Strangers on LinkedIn.”

Go for the off-line meeting right away, and never presume that you are a good fit. The reason for your call with them is to see if you might be a good fit.

When your inMail demonstrates you’ve done your homework and you won’t be wasting their time, and your profile is relevant to them, you’re very likely to get a positive response.

Now You

The name of the game is networking. It has always worked. It will continue to work. It worked for blog reader Kathy when she got her dream job during the height of the recession in 2009.

It will work for you now.

But you can’t do any of this if your profile isn’t in tip-top shape.