Networking 101: LinkedIn
Sept. 6, 2008
LinkedIn, Plaxo, Facebook, Myspace are all the rage but can seem a bit intimidating to anyone whose teenage years are in the rearview mirror.
I will focus on LinkedIn as I have the most experience with it but the others are interesting tools as well.
LinkedIn and Plaxo are primarily focused on professional networking, while Facebook and Myspace are more about social networking. Facebook has recently been pushing into the professional networking space as well.
Professional and social networking differ primarily in that professional networking is using people you know to connect to people (and organizations) that you don't know. Social networking has much more to do with sharing info, schedules, pictures, music, etc. with people you already know.
Now to LinkedIn … In order to drive LinkedIn successfully you need to enter as many current contacts as possible. These can be entered in manually or transferred from an Outlook contact folder. Once your contacts are in, you send them all an invite asking them to connect. Once connected to them in LinkedIn you will then have access to all of their contacts, and their contacts' contacts, and so on.
Now what did that gain us besides lots of contacts? The answer is the "Kevin Bacon 6 degrees of separation' phenomenon unless you are Amish. … 8^) With even a modest number of direct contacts you will have access to a very large network.
From my personal experience I will give two clear benefits:
(1) In selling, it is often very difficult to get past the receptionist. Sometimes near impossible, especially when you don't know who you are trying to reach. With LinkedIn you can do an advanced search using the 'company' and 'title' fields and enter the name of the company and/or titles which you are trying to access. It is important to check the 'current only' boxes to make sure you are seeing folks currently at the company or in the position desired. It is also good to search with it unchecked as well in order to see all possible connections that you can network through. Sometimes you have a connection that has left the company but can still help you connect.(2) When looking for a job, it is also difficult to find a hiring manager. [opinion warning] Recruiters in and out of companies are for the most part useless. Using LinkedIn search you can find the person you want to connect with and often someone who knows you both that can do a personal referral. This is key to avoiding the resume pile.
Here is the link, come on in the water is fine. Remember who you know is more important than what you know when it comes to getting in!