How to Advertise Your LinkedIn Job Listing to Your Network

2 of 4 in Series: The Essentials of Filling a Job on LinkedIn

When you use LinkedIn for a job post, you have a distinct advantage: your own network. You’re connected to people who you know and trust, people who you have worked with before so you know their capabilities, and most importantly, people who know you and (hopefully) have a better idea than the average person as to what kind of person you would hire.

LinkedIn allows you to send all or some of the people in your network a message, letting them know about your job opening and asking them if they, or anyone they know, might be interested in this job. When you’re ready to advertise your job listing, follow these steps.

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Click the drop-down arrow next to Jobs (on the top navigation bar) and then select Manage Jobs.

After you’ve posted your job, you should see the position listed in the Manage Jobs window under Open Jobs. Click on that job title to bring up the Job Status window for that job listing.

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Click the Tell Your Network! button to generate a LinkedIn message.

LinkedIn automatically generates a response, as shown here, that you can send out to your network. Feel free to edit the text in the message box to make it sound like it’s coming from you, or just leave the default message in place.

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Click the Select Connections button to decide who will get this message from you.

A window opens up with all your connections, as shown here. You can use the options under Narrow Your Connections to reduce the list you see in the window.

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Select the people you want to send this message, click Finished and then click Send.

From your Narrow Your Connections window, click the check box next to their names, so their names appear in the list on the right.

You can also select the check box next to “Showing X of X connections” to automatically select up to 200 connections from your network.

Your LinkedIn connections will receive a message in their LinkedIn inboxes and, depending on their notification settings, an e-mail with this message as well. They can click a link from the message to see the job listing and either apply themselves or forward it to their contacts for consideration.