Fully Explore Options to Get LinkedIn to the Max!

I'm LinkedIn

Like most of you reading this post I'm LinkedIn.  While I've been LinkedIn for quite a while, I didn't realize it's full potential until recently.  I've used LinkedIn to connect with colleagues and friends from past chapters of my life and as a vehicle to put my best professional foot forward.  I belong to a select number of groups and, as had been suggested at a LinkedIn workshop, have jumped into discussions to get myself known.  But the real potential of LinkedIn, to connect with people at target companies, became quite apparent with this recent experience.

FRUSTRATION...

I've been trying to connect with someone at a specific university for quite a while with little success.  I'd uncovered some network connections, sent the usual e-mail referencing the mutual colleague's name in the subject line and requested a meeting, a method that has proved to be very successful and has resulted in personal meetings in all but one instance.  In this case, it just wasn't working and I was very frustrated.  I kept seeing a great job posting at the university for which my skills and experience would be a good match, and while I'd applied to it on-line, in that I am transitioning from one arena to another, I knew a network connection would be critical to getting in the door. 

So here's what I did...

I did some searching on the university's website and developed as long a list as possible of people I wanted to connect with.  I then went back and started diligently searching on LinkedIn to see if anyone I knew, knew any of these people.  I came up with a few distant connections, people who were 3 or 4 contacts away from the people I wanted to meet, meaning they didn't really have a direct connection.  My connection would have to work through their connection to get to 'the' connection to see if they'd meet with me.  While this can work, it's a hard sell because the person in the middle doesn't know the individual making the initial request at all.  Convoluted, but I hope you can follow the flow and the logic.

Perseverance...

So I continued to run through the list of names I'd gotten from the university site on LinkedIn, often finding people only by using the advanced search option, looking for a second line contact, someone connected to one of my first line contacts.  I finally came up with one in the very department I'm interested in networking into.  At that point I clicked on the small type that read 'Get Introduced'.  What came up next was a place for me to write an e-mail to the person I wanted to meet and below that a box where I could write an e-mail to my direct contact asking him to make the introduction.  My contact wrote back stating that, while he didn't know the person very well, he would forward my request.

Success!

While it took a week, and I had actually given up on hearing from this once removed contact, I was so pleased to find a LinkedIn message from her today in which she said she'd be happy to meet with me. 

Take the time to explore
While it's true that today's job seekers spend too much time conducting their searches on-line rather than getting out and talking with people,  I'm recommending you take the time to explore sites like LinkedIn to see what they can offer.  Go through the tutorials and click on all of the links to see how you can make the best use of these sites.  Your ultimate goal should be to get out to meet people and network.  It is the way people find jobs.  Use these on-line sites to uncover these network connections, the critical link that will lead you to your next chapter.