Job Search Strategies Using LinkedIn

You can include LinkedIn as part of your overall job search. These job search strategies that involve LinkedIn can help add information, contacts, interviews, and hopefully some offers to your job search. Use one or use them all, but pick the methods you feel most comfortable with implementing.

Think of LinkedIn as not only the sum of your first-degree immediate connections, but also your extended network of second- and third-degree network members. These colleagues can help connect you with information, referrals, and hopefully, a new career.

Keep these points in mind when you’re working on your job search using LinkedIn:

Change the Sorted By option to Degrees Away from You, or Degrees and Recommendations. When searching for the right contacts, be sure to change the Sorted By option from Keyword Relevance to another option based on Degrees.
Ask for referrals whenever possible. Exchange information first and then request a referral.
Get your friends involved. Let your immediate network know about your goals so they can recommend people for you to talk to.

Because people who have the same job title as you are already employed and not your direct competition, they’re more likely to offer help and advice. When you’re ready to implement this strategy, keep these points in mind:

*Perform an advanced search for people with a similar job title as the one you’re applying for.
*Narrow and clarify your search by industry.
*When you find someone who has the job title you’d like to have, see whether she's interested in meeting for an informational interview.

Typically, people who share a school have an ongoing affinity. You can increase the chance of someone considering your request if you and that person attended the same school. Therefore, take advantage of your alumni status and try to connect and work with people who went to one of the same schools as you.

Here are some tips to help further this type of search by using LinkedIn:

Search for Alumni Association Groups of any school you attended.
Connect as a former classmate and ask for information first, referral second.
Use the Find Past or Present Classmates function available in Add Connections to look for classmates from the schools in your profile.
Check the connection list of any of your contacts who attended school with you.
Try doing an advanced search with the school name as a keyword.

Suppose you know you want to work at one of the top computer database software companies. Now, you can use LinkedIn to help you find the right people at those companies that can help you. Here are some points to consider:

Make a list of the 10 companies you’d like to work for and do an advanced search for each one. Put the company name in the Company field and select the check box labeled Current Companies Only.
Use Advanced Search to look for people who used to work there and see what advice they can give you. Many times, past employees still maintain contacts at their old company, and they can definitely attest to the work environment and corporate culture
Get some information from the person you're replacing. Find the person at the company whose job you’re taking and ask her for her opinion of it, information about the hiring manager, company, and so on.