LinkedIn Tips and Tricks

LinkedIn Tips and Tricks

I wanted to share my experience and some quick LinkedIn tips with everyone in this first blog post. It all started when I was new to recruiting in the nuclear industry sector. My biggest challenge was in finding candidates for expatriate assignments. I immediately started scourging the job boards and turning them upside down for the right candidates for my highly specific jobs. To add a cherry to the cake, the skills criteria for candidates were rigid and after a lot of futile attempts and frustration, I finally decided to go about this the right way. I had to come up with an ideal strategy and get over the job boards once and for all. My strategy involved some heavy duty passive sourcing.

The first networking tool which I thought of was LinkedIn. LinkedIn is my favourite networking tool right since I started recruiting and I always added a lot of professionals from various industry sectors to my LinkedIn network. But, when I started searching for experts within the nuclear industry; I wasn’t getting results that I could boast of. The main reason for this lack of success was that I didn’t have nuclear industry professionals in my LinkedIn network. Without further ado I had to start adding the who’s who of the nuclear industry in my LinkedIn connections. Where to start was the question? I sent out add requests to a whole lot of Nuclear professionals. But, I had a fear of rejection from candidates because this would drastically affect my cherished LinkedIn account. I did not want to take any chances.

But, giving up was not the solution. So I had to be smart with LinkedIn. In my quest for nuclear industry expat candidates I found some really cool ways to work LinkedIn which continue to help me tremendously.

Here are my special LinkedIn tips:

Send requests to all the candidates that you speak with right after you hang up. The candidates are more likely to add a recruiter that they have just spoken to rather than a stranger who approaches them on LinkedIn. Once the request is accepted it opens new doors of opportunity to connect with that particular candidate’s network..

Join groups where candidates with specific skills sets or a niche industry sector will have discussions on LinkedIn. Being a member of that group, the recruiter can send messages which go to everyone in the group. I had sent some messages giving a short introduction to the jobs and benefits for my client. The results were amazing and within a week I had over 150 contacts in the nuclear industry. Obviously I was thrilled and this worked! Many professionals even sent requests asking me to add them voluntarily. I guess being at the right place and at the right time means something on the internet too. J.

An excellent method of reaching out to people is to start a discussion in any of the groups by using links on the internet about that particular technology to bag responses from the professionals. Professionals will comment to posts and can be directly added to your LinkedIn connections. Another cool thing to do with discussion groups is to post job adverts in and hope for a placement from one of the solid responses.

Ask intelligent, technology specific questions to the people in your LinkedIn connections list. These questions are generally related to their industry, they can be found on the internet with a little bit of research or by staying abreast of the news, views and reviews in that technology specific sector.

Request for references or referrals by drafting very effective emails and send it to all the connections. The candidates forward the emails with job details to other people in their network and the job gets a wide publicity. A lot of the professionals in the candidates’ network will respond to the recruiters out of curiosity to know more about the job, client, salary, benefits, etc.

These techniques are simple to follow and I am still adding to the list. I will definitely share with everyone once I have some more cool LinkedIn tips. Before you start adding connections to your LinkedIn account please remember to have a very descriptive and concrete LinkedIn profile, the professionals will choose to network with someone who comes across as extremely credible. We will also discuss steps to create a great LinkedIn profile in the upcoming posts. Happy reading and happy networking!

Get in touch with me at sophia@iplaceusa.com or call me at 708-590-2820

Regards,
Sophia

Next Post >

Comment by Amitai Givertz on March 24, 2009 at 10:59pm: Sophia, thanks for posting!

Comment by Maureen Sharib on March 25, 2009 at 6:05am: Yes, Sophia, thanks and I think you have discovered a new use for the word "scourging"!
I had never heard it before-thanks again!

Comment by Sophia Simon on March 25, 2009 at 11:14am: Hey Thanks a lot for reading the article.

Comment by Tom Sweeney on March 25, 2009 at 11:52am: Sophia - good blog and I think your points for expanding your network are very valid and effective. You (and others) may also wish to try connecting with LinkedIn members who are simply open to connecting to gain access to their network.

- LIONS
- Open Networkers
- Top Linked Memembers

These types of groups are open to connecting with people from all industries and generally have a large network thus adding to your network.

Just something to think about!

Good luck!

Tom - http://sweens.wordpress.com

Comment by Sophia Simon on March 25, 2009 at 12:32pm: Hey Tom,
Thanks a lot for the valuable tips :) I saw your blog, it is great.

Comment by Sue Curran on March 25, 2009 at 3:13pm: Great article, thanks for the tips. Join me on linkedin, I take everyone, scconsultingllp@comcast.net. Thanks Sue Curran

Comment by Maureen Sharib on March 25, 2009 at 3:21pm: Newest LinkedIn changes to be discussed in MagicTalk!
LinkedIn appears to be locking us out! Take a look at this string and see if you're not alarmed by what you see:
http://tinyurl.com/cfafr7

Recently LinkedIn has:
Made the "bulk accept" feature nearly impossible to find (We'll let you in on where it is)
Made it impossible to see your group member emails
Made it impossible to export your group members for communication other than once/weekly
Someone said (at that link) that LI is getting set to change the ability to see 100 profiles down to 60 as of 4/23

There are other bad things too, according to a tweet I saw on Twitter from Irina (braingain) Have you experienced them and what are they?
WHAT IS THE FUTUIRE OF LINKEDIN?

All that will be the subject of the newly reinstated MagicTalk at the MagicMethod community site. Come to class, usual time, noon EST on TH Match 26 for the fireworks! Click into the new "TinyChat" box at the top of the main page, insert your name and let's get chattin' about all this.

See you in class at www.magicmethod.ning.com!
Maureen

Comment by chetan on March 26, 2009 at 11:48am: Sophia, Thank you very much for your tips

Comment by Irina Shamaeva on March 27, 2009 at 11:10am: Sophia,

You are making excellent points here. I'd add one thing to this. I think a great way of sourcing on LinkedIn is creating your own group(s). As an example, you could create a group dedicated to your pool of candidates/industry and invite experts to add interesting content. Another option is to create a group that is specifically for job posts. Since LI groups have the Jobs tab, this makes it attractive to use groups as free mini-job boards. Of course, your group would be attractive to others only if you spend some time there, lightly moderating, weeding out the "open networkers" posts and adding content - but it's worth it.
There are some recent changes/limitations that affect group managers that are good to be aware of, but this still seems to be a productive approach. Besides, you will be helping others and it may feel good. :)

Irina

Comment by Sophia Simon on March 27, 2009 at 4:50pm: Irina,

The tips you mentioned in your comment are very useful. Thanks a lot for sharing your knowledge.

Comment