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HiroProtagonist
May 7, 2007
Hi goons! This thread is intended to be a resource for help and guidance for all things related to job hunting on Linkedin. I'll start off with an effortpost with as much informative content as I can, and in addition, I'll try and periodically update the OP with additional good posting as I see it. If you'd like to see something added to the OP, just ask!

Intro

Are you:
  • A recent grad from college or grad school, looking for a career change, or simply trying to make a change of scenery job-wise?
  • Interested in finding out what that whole "Linkedin thing" is all about?
  • Frustrated with the lack of leads from Monster, Dice, CareerBuilder, USAJobs or other sites?
  • Already on Linkedin but hopelessly bewildered by the site and have no idea how to leverage it to get you (not just help you, but actually get you) a job?

Then, this thread is for you.

Linkedin is arguably the best professional development tool at your disposal when it comes to job-hunting today. Leveraging it correctly, you can have recruiters and employers cold-calling you to secure your candidacy for open positions.

Although there's a not-insignificant amount of initial effort required to get to the point where you have people recruiting you instead of the other way around, once you put in that time, you'll find that the reach of your resume almost takes on a life of its own, doing the majority of the work to market you, your skills, and your experience through sheer momentum.

So Who's This Guy?

I'm in my late twenties and have been exclusively using Linkedin for job hunting since shortly after I graduated from college. Before that, I had about a half dozen different profiles on as many job websites, and despite having a polished up resume posted on every single one, the only emails I ever got were from the websites themselves, telling me about new jobs being posted. Very early on in my career, I was lucky enough to work with a guy twenty years older who told me about Linkedin and what I could do there that would guarantee a ton of interest in having me as a candidate, and probably more than a few job offers.

Prior to that point in my life, while I had a Linkedin profile already, it was almost bare-bones; Linkedin was sort of a professional tchotchke to me, with little real practical use. At first I was a little skeptical--how could what amounted to a myspace for professionals actually help me? Did that many people really have a Linkedin profile anyway?

Well, as it happened, I was ready to move on from that job anyway, so I took my coworker's advice and spent about a week's worth of work laying the necessary groundwork on Linkedin. By the end of that week, I had over fifteen email exchanges going with recruiters, most of whom had contacted me first. A week after that, I had three interviews for my top choices of the available opportunities. In another two weeks, I had a conditional offer on the table for the position that I liked the most out of the bunch.

Although it took another three weeks for me to be hired there due to internal pressures not related to me, my experience using Linkedin to find a job thoroughly sold me on it as a much more successful avenue for job-hunting among the available alternatives.

Since then, I've had a lot of time to figure out what works on Linkedin, what doesn't, and why. I've successfully applied the techniques in this OP to help a number of close friends and relatives boost their success in finding a job through Linkedin. And now, I sincerely hope that I can help to launch hundreds of goons into shiny new jobs while empowering them to make their own career choices, rather than having the choice of hunting for a new job largely influenced by their employer whims or workplace pressures.

The TL;DR Bulletpoints of Linkedin Job Hunting
(followed by more informative explanations)

  • Finding a job on Linkedin WILL require you to put in effort.

    You must be willing to put in the time required to establish connections, join and participate in groups, and fill out your profile/professional experience, at least in the beginning, or you will not have the desired success. There are no shortcuts here. The good news is that I believe wholeheartedly that putting in this effort on Linkedin will have a far greater return on that investment than any other jobs website.

  • Fill out your profile to the maximum extent possible to get that 100% completion mark.

    This might be one that many people would ignore, because it seems trivial and meaningless. Linkedin actually has your profile completion %-age factor into your visibility in search results. At one point, it would tell you that up front--I'm not sure if it does any more. Regardless, fill it all out completely and to a professional degree of quality. It's your online face--make sure you don't do the equivalent of wearing jorts to an interview. This includes having a good and professional picture: don't upload a picture of you doing a keg stand at that party last Saturday or hanging out on a beach somewhere.

    Recruiters and employers will judge you, sometimes harshly, on how they perceive your profile picture. I have heard anecdotal accounts of conditional job offers being withdrawn when the prospective employee's picture communicated an unprofessional tone. It may not be fair, but it can definitely happen, and we all pre-judge people to a certain extent anyway.

    The other usual tips for general picture-taking also apply: higher quality cameras take higher quality (i.e. all around better) pictures, etc. One partial exception to taking "casual" pictures that I've found on Linkedin is that candid-looking pictures get a more positive reception than posed pictures. To get a sense of what I mean, instead of simply posing for a picture in an office for example, it'd be better to get a more candid-looking picture that looks like you just happened to have a picture taken while standing in an office. Smile, be friendly and engaging in your picture and look professional.

    Pictures are the first and potentially the most significant impression, but I'll try and give more profile tips that I've found to be useful and informative later in the OP. For now, it's enough to say that your profile should be complete, accurate, of professional quality, and include a good, professional-looking picture.

  • Linkedin is not Facebook, and the people who use it are not your friends--when in doubt, send connection requests.

    Linkedin is all about professional networking and human interaction, not making friends and socializing. Like real life, getting a job is all about who you know. Linkedin facilitates that to an incredible degree by making it easy and quick to both find and accept useful professional connections. The key individuals who are sponsoring and recruiting for those job openings are often so busy that they would never in a million years have the time to do that networking if it were done face-to-face. With Linkedin though, all you have to do is click, click, click.

    When in doubt, send a connection request (if it's possible). You never know who just might someday happen to be working at the company you want to apply to, or heading up the division that's expanding its team and needs a new member. At an absolute minimum, you will expand your reach and visibility with every new contact you make.

    Since this comes up occasionally, I should mention that nobody will think it's weird to receive an unsolicited connection request. In fact, that's the way Linkedin usually works. In the vast majority of cases, it's not required nor necessary to explain to someone why you'd like to connect. Send requests, send them often.

  • Groups are your friend, join them.

    Linkedin has thousands and thousands of professional groups, in a huge variety of fields and disciplines. Join the ones that are relevant to the type of job you want to get, starting with the largest groups. You can find these groups by searching every key word you can think of in the search bar that is associated with your desired job title (Google around if you need ideas, or are less familiar with the field).

    When searching for groups, don't use jargon unless you only want to find jobs in a highly specialized area of expertise. Also be aware of differences in regional and national dialects. A very basic example: in the field of government contracting, a "bid" in the UK is a formal submission to a government contracting officer in response to a "tender." In the US, the same thing would be referred to as a "proposal" in response to a government-issued "solicitation," while bid is a term used more informally. A British expat looking to find a job in the US doing similar work might run into a few stumbling blocks unless they're aware of the differences in dialect.

    Note about groups: most Linkedin groups' discussion areas are full of poo poo posting and/or resemble an echo chamber for industry marketing types. Don't worry about it, and join those groups anyway. There will certainly be interesting or informative postings in the more active and better moderated groups, but unless you care about socializing more than finding a job (and that's legitimate, too), don't feel the need to participate. It can help you to make intelligent, thoughtful posts in the more visible groups, but it's by no means required and joining the group is all that's necessary to get access to the Jobs board, which is what you really care about.

    The reason that groups are Very Important is because they are the initial avenue to reaching your target audience while job-hunting. Recruiters will be members of the more active groups because those groups tend to have many more postings on their Jobs board, ensuring steady demand and constant eyes on any listing they post. Besides the obvious benefits for you as a prospective candidate, the other huge advantage of being in the same group as recruiters is somewhat less obvious. Without getting too much into how or why, Linkedin facilitates making new connections if you share the same group. More profile information is generally available to group peers, and on top of that, any keyword searches (a recruiter searching for potential candidates by required skills or experience, for example) will return the most "relevant" Linkedin profiles closer to the top of the results. "Most relevant" in this case meaning the results with the most complete set of information available, which due to most peoples' visibility settings will either be their 1st (direct) or 2nd (shared group or connection) degree connections. This is a prime reason that having connections is a prerequisite for effective job searching.

    :siren: Connections are required if you want the jobs to come to you. :siren:

    Although ideally you will (eventually) be a 1st degree connection of a good number of recruiters, there will always be others circulating about out there and the number one way they will happen across your profile is through being listed in their search results because you have a group in common.

    The Jobs board of a group is what gets most of the attention, and will also most likely require the most maintenance on your part while you're actively searching for a job. The simplest method is posting a short and to the point message on the board with a one sentence description of your experience with a note mentioning that you're looking for new opportunities and encouraging readers to check out your profile. Don't post an email yet, that will just invite spam.

    If you're concerned about potentially alerting a present employer that you're looking elsewhere, you may only be comfortable with perusing the currently available job postings. This is a perfectly productive method as well, but you'll want to take the additional step of sending Linkedin connection requests to all of the people posting job listings, even if you aren't interested in the particular job they've posted. That way, you'll accomplish getting into their pool of potential candidates, in the hopes of receiving future opportunities that are potentially much more interesting as they pop up without having to monitor every single Jobs board necessarily.

    Make sure new connections you make with recruiters know that the lines of communication are open by sending an introductory message. You can include this message in the connection request, but I don't necessarily recommend that, as it can be missed; instead, send a follow up message after your contact accepts.

    As far as content is concerned, I recommend just using a copy and paste form letter to save time, it need not be more elaborate than "Hi [NAME], I just wanted to send you a quick note to let you know that I'm current looking for a new position and if you would please contact me at [EMAIL], I would be happy to email you my resume and review any positions you currently need filled. Thanks, [YOURNAME]" or some variation on that. In general, follow the guidelines of keeping it short (no more than 3-4 sentences) and professional.

  • Get recommendations from friends, past or present co-workers or supervisors, and especially other recruiters.

    The last part of that sentence is the most important, but I'll get to that in a moment. On Linkedin, "Recommendations" are actual written professional references that are displayed on your profile. Unless it's changed since I created my profile, Linkedin initially requests you to get 3 different recommendations in order to reach 100% profile completion. This is the first and most immediate reason to get them, however it could never hurt to get more.** You'll probably find that it's easiest and quickest to get a couple friends or close coworkers to do this, initially. In general, the more recently given it is, the better. Eventually however, you'll want to get at least one recommendation from a recruiter, which brings us to the most important point here.
    ** Removed as a requirement by LinkedIn at some point in 2012/2013

    Because it is vitally important to their professional success, recruiters tend to be the best networkers in the class. You can leverage that existing network to increase your own visibility with a little help. After a period of time, you'll likely form some decent working relationships with recruiters, whether or not you receive any offers of employment in the process.

    Ask one or two of your favorite recruiters to write you a quick recommendation on Linkedin. Most would be happy to do so, and you should return the favor in kind as well. This helps you tap into their existing network of connections, which is a boon for job-hunters through dramatically increasing the visibility of their profile.

    The way this works is, on Linkedin, a connection's recommendations of others are visible on the profile of the recommending user. It doesn't matter if you are connected to the recommended individual. When a recruiter recommends you, every single person who visits that recruiter's Linkedin profile has a chance to see your name and click on your profile. Recruiters are the most popular people on Linkedin in terms of traffic and activity, so getting a recommendation from a recruiter is exponentially more effective than others through simple numbers. Playing that numbers game long enough will pay dividends in the form of job opportunities. Essentially, it's free self-promotion without any further effort required.

    In my opinion, getting at least one recommendation from a recruiter is absolutely essential.

    As a brief side note, Linkedin recently added another feature called "Endorsements" which is mostly useless and dumb, so don't confuse it with recommendations. I encourage you to bury the Endorsements feature on your profile as much as you can. If someone can explain to me how it's useful beyond simply playing a version of Pokemon on Linkedin ("Liked-in?"), I'd love to hear it.

  • Add your contacts from Outlook, Gmail, and any other services that you use.

    I can understand some people's reluctance to link their personal email to their professional presence on Linkedin, but there's no reason not to import your corporate email contacts. The reasoning for adding corporate email contacts is fairly straightforward and doesn't require any elaboration.

    While concern about importing personal email contacts is understandable, in the absence of an overriding reason not to, I would highly encourage everyone to do it. Personal references and relationships are the smoothest and least difficult path to find and be offered jobs. Merging your personal and professional contacts in order to centralize your professional life in one place, i.e. Linkedin, also makes sense for many reasons.

    A centralized online professional presence allows you to maintain a single set of information that is as up to date as you'd like, rather than updating the same information in many different profiles maintained independently around the internet. Any of your friends or relatives who use Linkedin on a regular basis will also see your updates and changes, potentially alerting them to consider you for an upcoming or currently open opportunity.

    I can't speak for the iPhone, but the Android app for Linkedin essentially makes it a virtual Rolodex for the new age, with connections accessible through Google's phone search, which I find convenient when needed.

    As far as any potential consequences of associating Linkedin with your Google account, I can only give my personal impressions; but, by all appearances, it doesn't seem that Linkedin gets associated with your Google account any more than is absolutely necessary to import your Gmail contacts and nothing further. There are quite a few privacy options available through Linkedin if that kind of thing makes you skittish. You also have the option to revoke Linkedin's access at any time, even immediately after importing your contacts from Gmail.

The Practical Stuff

So how do you go about putting all this stuff into practice? For someone new to Linkedin, there is a fairly definitive sequence of steps to take initially. The bullets above largely follow that order, and ideally you would want to complete each step before moving on. If that's not your style though, or if you're already halfway through them coming in to the thread, then feel free to ignore the order.

However, in simple terms, those steps are as follows:

1. Complete your profile to 100%. Linkedin will tell you when you get there. Although they are not required for profile completion, get recommendations at this point as well if you have people you can ask (coworkers, former bosses, college professors, etc.).

2. Search for groups relevant to the field(s) you're interested in.

3. As you join groups, send connection requests to people who seem to be relatively active in each one, as well as every single recruiter who is a member of each group.

4. Review the Jobs board for each group, sending connection requests to every person posting a listing, and applying for any open listings that seem attractive to you.

5. Post a short notice in each group explaining that you're interested in open opportunities and inviting them to connect with you.

6. Get your resume to every recruiter connection that you have. Don't spam them with Linkedin messages, all that's required is a short note inviting them to email you for it and offering to discuss any open opportunities they have.

7. Once you've established a good working relationship with a recruiter, politely request that they write you a recommendation on your Linkedin profile. Be sure to reciprocate.

8. Get hired! Remember that, all other considerations aside, you dictate the terms of each offer. Don't feel the need to rush through the process with one position if you're currently engaged in several others--you might get a better offer from one of them.

9. Enjoy getting cold calls every week from recruiters even after you've been hired on.

10. When you'd like to move on, repeat steps 4-6 one to two months before you anticipate giving your notice.

That's it.

Linkedin Tools

<obligatory joke about inane social media marketing types on Linkedin>

Linkedin provides several tools to assist you with a job search. Many of them were added recently, even within the last year, when the entire site was overhauled in a major redesign.

With very few exceptions, I think these additions are a massive improvement. The job search function is ridiculously easy to use, and will by default show jobs from the groups you're a member of in the Home view. This is automatic, and will occasionally even find job postings you might have missed.

The profile organizer allows you to customize and redesign your profile to flow more smoothly or logically. Or, if you're so inclined, or just like pressing butans, you can stuff every category of irrelevant bullshit into it that your heart desires, as some people have don't do this holy poo poo.

Parting Words

I'm aware this is a very wordy OP--I tried to condense it as much as I could, but it's still an infodump, at best. Ask any questions you'd like, and I (or a helpful goon) will probably be able to give you a coherent answer.

:siren: Remember: do not post your Linkedin profile unless you want to have your SA name attached to it. :siren:

If there's enough interest, I may start a Google group or Facebook group to share individual profiles for feedback. Please PM me if you're interested, or email me: hiro.protagonist.sa@gmail.com

Note: I don't subscribe to any of the Linkedin "premium" features, so I can't offer any real comment on them. If you have had positive experiences with them (or otherwise), please weigh in.

------------

Additional Information

zmcnulty is the admin of an SA-related group on Linkedin called Stairmasters. 87 members at the moment and counting. Join to connect with other goons!

:siren: When applying to the group, include the words "I am protected" in the comment box. :siren:

This is so that we know everyone applying to the group is a goon, and not innocent bystanders who think it's a professional group for stair-manufacturing professionals.


------------

Azuth0667 has some detailed feedback on the "Linkedin Premium" features:

Azuth0667 posted:

It's not worth the money. I was given premium when I graduated from college as a parting gift from career services. It was convenient but I didn't notice an improvement in my job search from before when I had premium and now that I do not have premium. For recruiters its definitely useful because of the messaging but for seekers not so much.

E: The breakdown.

Who's viewed my profile: This is interesting but not very useful. Its nice to see who viewed your profile to gauge who it is attracting but the non-premium view is fine. You don't need to see the entirety of who looked at it to tell if its attracting who you want.

Full Profiles: I thought this was awesome because I could see all of those people who I was barely connected to but it really isn't needed you can always ask for an introduction from one of your higher connections.

Full Name Visibility: Useless, no one gives a poo poo what my common full name is.

Premium Search: It makes searching more convenient but you can make up for it by putting in more time to your searching and picking through companies/jobs.

Profiles Per Search: Pointless I'm trying to find a job not a person/profile, good for a recruiter.

Search Alerts: Also pointless if you are serious about finding a job you search every day. You don't need any more spam than you already get.

Reference Search: Also pointless, merely talking to people and asking them to introduce you to someone else is enough.

InMail Messages: Very nice for a recruiter, I found them to be useless as recruiters were already happy to respond to me.

Company Introductions: Again pointless, you want a connection with someone working for the company who can recommend you for a job not just "the company".

OpenLink: I turned this one once and immediately got messaged by someone trying to run an MLM so I turned it off right away.

Profile Organizer: Handy for organization but nothing you can't do yourself with simple files on your HD.

Priority Customer Service: Yeah this is BS you get the same customer service no matter what and its mediocre.

------------

Sarcasmatron linked a very helpful article from Forbes that primarily deals with what to do with your Linkedin profile when you get laid off, but also includes many other tips for what to do with it in general.

Some additional thoughts:

Sarcasmatron posted:

My experience has been that it's more a question of of making my profile more parse-able for recruiters. That and making my network as big as possible. The more people in my network, the greater the likelihood that they will be able to see something that compels them to message you, based on whatever requisitions they're trying to fill.

To see what I'm talking about, look at a 3rd degree connection, then look at a 2nd degree connection. You can see a lot more about a 2nd degree connection. Now pretend you're a recruiter. You're more likely to reach out to someone who you have more information on, as it going to be a more accurate "cold call": 3rd degree recruiters ask me if I'm a mobile developer (NO), while 2nd degree recruiters ask me if I'm interested in managing mobile projects (YES).

I realize anecdotes are... anecdotal. Having said that, I've hired for 3 positions out of LI, and they've all worked out - my current direct report was out of LI.

Yesterday I had a nice 2nd round interview with the VP of Technology and VP of Product for a media company I'd really like to work at, and I have a phone screen next week for a mobile PM position: we've already established a base salary of 15% above my current base, so now I just need to show up for interviews.

TL;DR: LI is not a vending machine. Build a compelling profile, maximize the size of your network, and recruiters will come to you.

I've already had messages from a couple of people in this thread and had profile discussions - feel free to message me, either here or on LI.

HiroProtagonist fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Apr 21, 2016

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jackymc
Mar 30, 2010
Thanks for creating this!

Quick question, though: should I essentially be copy/pasting my resume into my profile?

I see some profiles with bulleted lists under their past and present jobs giving details that I'm assuming are already on their resume, and some profiles that just list the job with their start/end date, so I'm not really sure what's okay protocol.

jeeves
May 27, 2001

Deranged Psychopathic
Butler Extraordinaire
When does Linkedin tell you that your profile is at 100%? I take it when no longer has the "Improve your profile" button by your picture when you view your own profile?

I ask because some of the questions they ask I can't answer: like what is my current job (unemployed and looking), what courses I have taken (I filled out a bunch already), or what publications I have done (have none).

Otherwise, this seems like a good tool. I basically copy/pasted my resume onto the experience/school portions, however edited the experience descriptions a bit in case any of my old bosses read them/care.

shodanjr_gr
Nov 20, 2007
Linked in is an amazing thing. One day I decided I wanted to intern for a certain big company this summer. Found a recruiter on LinkedIn, sent a polite message, next week I was being interviewed and got an offer.

I was always wondering though, is that self agrandizing description of one's professional self crucial on a LinkedIn profile? I have a strong résumé already (2 internships with another big company, pursuing PhD, publications) but I don't want to be missing out,

zmcnulty
Jul 26, 2003

I'm the admin of the (only?) SA-related group on Linkedin, Stairmasters. Would be great to throw it in the already-awesome OP if you can! 87 members at the moment.

zmcnulty fucked around with this message at 04:50 on Mar 29, 2013

HiroProtagonist
May 7, 2007

zmcnulty posted:

I'm the admin of the (only?) SA-related group on Linkedin, Stairmasters. Would be great to throw it in the already-awesome OP if you can! 87 members at the moment.

Added! Thanks. I'll join the group too.

shodanjr_gr posted:

Linked in is an amazing thing. One day I decided I wanted to intern for a certain big company this summer. Found a recruiter on LinkedIn, sent a polite message, next week I was being interviewed and got an offer.

I was always wondering though, is that self agrandizing description of one's professional self crucial on a LinkedIn profile? I have a strong résumé already (2 internships with another big company, pursuing PhD, publications) but I don't want to be missing out,

It's not self-aggrandizing to self-promote. You should be proud of your accomplishments, and nobody will fault you for it. Boasting or bragging is a different matter, but it should be evident where the line is, and as long as you don't cross it you're perfectly okay.

It's much better to get close to that line than it is to under-sell yourself or downplay your accomplishments in any case. That's always a bad choice in any circumstances compared to the alternative.

jeeves posted:

When does Linkedin tell you that your profile is at 100%? I take it when no longer has the "Improve your profile" button by your picture when you view your own profile?

I ask because some of the questions they ask I can't answer: like what is my current job (unemployed and looking), what courses I have taken (I filled out a bunch already), or what publications I have done (have none).

Otherwise, this seems like a good tool. I basically copy/pasted my resume onto the experience/school portions, however edited the experience descriptions a bit in case any of my old bosses read them/care.

Linkedin now has this bubble-like thing on the side that shows your "profile strength" percentage. You can click on it I think to see what will increase it. Mine is 100% complete and it says that my profile strength is "All-Star," so use that as a yardstick I'd say.

antavila posted:

Thanks for creating this!

Quick question, though: should I essentially be copy/pasting my resume into my profile?

I see some profiles with bulleted lists under their past and present jobs giving details that I'm assuming are already on their resume, and some profiles that just list the job with their start/end date, so I'm not really sure what's okay protocol.

You can copy and paste your resume, but it's better to distill your experience and position responsibilities into narrative form. No more than a short paragraph or so; about 5-6 sentences should do it. In other words, just enough to give people a good idea of your previous experience without being overly wordy. Bullets don't really scan as well on a website profile, and putting in paragraph form condenses it a bit so that people are more likely to read it all too.

If you want to cut corners a little bit, you can even just take the text from your resume bullets and add periods to the end of every sentence. That'll be serviceable, at least. Just try and come back to it sometime soon afterwards to massage it into a more coherent form.

The whole reason for putting effort into including complete and coherently written position descriptions and past experience on your profile is that you want to essentially have the gist of your resume up there and stand out from the crowd. In all likelihood, people sourcing potential candidates won't have your resume already if they come across your profile on Linkedin. Hence, you want to give them a reason to reach out to you first and ask for it to get more information. Other people will do what they do, but if your objective is to use Linkedin to find a job, you'll want to do a better job than they do anyway. All other people's laziness does is make it easier for you to stand out as a strong candidate.

HiroProtagonist fucked around with this message at 21:42 on Feb 1, 2013

Nam Taf
Jun 25, 2005

I am Fat Man, hear me roar!

If your job is relatively in-demand then LinkedIn is great. Recruiters periodically pepper you with invitations to talk about opportunities, which you can take or leave as desired. Think of it in part as a resume that is constantly available for anyone to find. It essentially turns the job search equation around so that the jobs come to find your resume, rather than vice versa.

kitten smoothie
Dec 29, 2001

Curious if anyone's used the premium stuff (mainly the "Job-seeker" package) and have any opinions on it?

GAYS FOR DAYS
Dec 22, 2005

by exmarx
Just chiming in to say that Linkedin is great. A few months ago, I made a Linkedin profile that didn't have a whole lot of information, just a short little blurb, and I got an email literally the next day from a recruiter from a reputable company. Went through a couple phone interviews, turned out I wasn't really the right fit for the company, but the fact that I got a few interviews from just putting a few sentences about myself up really tells me that it can be a powerful tool. It's way more than I ever get from monster, indeed, etc.


I kind of stopped updating my profile for a while, but I'm working on it again right now because of this thread. I didn't know exactly how to utilize it to its potential, so thank you.

Joined the goons thread, too.

Hatless
Jan 5, 2013
Linkedin is a weird tool. There are a lot of recruiters on it, and that is probably what you want, if you're thinking of signing up.

With Linkedin, you'll get a lot of outsourced recruiters contacting you, sending your resume along for jobs you are not qualified for, and weeding you out of ones that you are based on different sets of arcane business rules.

These people don't know much about the jobs that they are trying to fill and can be easily fooled. If you're just starting out, don't get into technological details with them when they ask you things like, "Are you more experienced with PHP or Zend?" They're just trying to do their job.

If you want a job based on your skills and who you know, it's best to actually make friends with the people you work with and do what you do. They'll recommend you for jobs if it comes up.

A lot of you will be trying to get your first job though, so network doesn't mean much. In that case, Linkedin just functions as another Monster.com.

Sign up if you think this sounds good, but remember that the advice posted before me: These are not your friends. Treat it exactly like a Monster.com resume.

Hatless fucked around with this message at 05:08 on Feb 3, 2013

Omgbees
Nov 30, 2012

Hatless posted:

... These are not your friends. Treat it exactly like a Monster.com resume.

A million times this, the recruiters that pick you up on here often have no idea of either the requirements of the jobs they put you up for or how your skills line up against the requirements.

The amount of times I have ended an interview early because the applicant served up by a recruitment agency was woefully under qualified for the role we advertised for is staggering.

HiroProtagonist
May 7, 2007

Omgbees posted:

A million times this, the recruiters that pick you up on here often have no idea of either the requirements of the jobs they put you up for or how your skills line up against the requirements.

The amount of times I have ended an interview early because the applicant served up by a recruitment agency was woefully under qualified for the role we advertised for is staggering.

There's some good advice here. After you're initially contacted by a recruiter and they get you on the phone, it's absolutely worth asking if their recruiting agency is under contract to a client. Usually, a company sourcing for high-value or a large number of positions will contract one or more recruiting agencies to help fill the opening(s).

If a recruiter is contracted, it's a more reliable possibility to pursue; but by no means is it a given. Non-contract recruiters (aka "headhunters") will often throw everything against the wall and hope it sticks. This means that headhunters will not hesitate to throw you under the bus in favor of another candidate if it gets them a commission.

It should be said that headhunters can, and will, source for high-value positions, and I'm sure that more than one person has a story where they landed an amazing job because of a headhunter. However, treat that as the exception, rather than the rule. When dealing with non-contract recruiters, cover your own rear end first.

kitten smoothie
Dec 29, 2001

I also get a little put off by e-friend requests from recruiters when they also come with job postings. It usually seems to me like they're trying to skirt around having to pay LinkedIn for messaging. And if they've already established a pattern of cheaping out or trying to skirt around rules, it makes me think they're not above doing shady stuff to me to make an extra buck for themselves, either.

COUNTIN THE BILLIES
Jan 8, 2006

by Ion Helmet
I got my current job via LinkedIn. The job boards are awesome and I would get more interview requests from that than any other place. It's a pretty great tool. Just be smart about it.

It will continue to replace the resume as we know it.

Rurutia
Jun 11, 2009
The one thing that worries me about LinkedIn is discretion. If you're linked with your manager or boss, a sudden burst of activity can alert them to you looking for other jobs months before you're ready to say anything or are even sure you're leaving. I'm not quite sure how to deal with that, to be honest.

Nam Taf
Jun 25, 2005

I am Fat Man, hear me roar!

Rurutia posted:

The one thing that worries me about LinkedIn is discretion. If you're linked with your manager or boss, a sudden burst of activity can alert them to you looking for other jobs months before you're ready to say anything or are even sure you're leaving. I'm not quite sure how to deal with that, to be honest.

So keep it periodically up-to-date (once a month or so) and they won't ever see a big flurry of change. Not much can change between each month of your employment anyway.

Rurutia
Jun 11, 2009

Nam Taf posted:

So keep it periodically up-to-date (once a month or so) and they won't ever see a big flurry of change. Not much can change between each month of your employment anyway.

I meant more joining groups of a certain area or someone who's just getting started now after this thread. It's very much a personal problem, not a criticism of LinkedIn.

VVV Thanks, I'll look into that.

Rurutia fucked around with this message at 00:42 on Feb 4, 2013

lambeth
Aug 31, 2009

Rurutia posted:

The one thing that worries me about LinkedIn is discretion. If you're linked with your manager or boss, a sudden burst of activity can alert them to you looking for other jobs months before you're ready to say anything or are even sure you're leaving. I'm not quite sure how to deal with that, to be honest.

Unless things have changed, there are settings where you can change it so your contacts can't see your updates.

Dr_Amazing
Apr 15, 2006

It's a long story
I get a lot of strange recommendations on mine. It's pretty common for me to get job postings for the lowest entry level jobs, mixed in with recommendations to apply to run the entire marketing department of a company.

Econosaurus
Sep 22, 2008

Successfully predicted nine of the last five recessions

How do I know if somebody is a recruiter, especially for a field I'm interested in?

kansas
Dec 3, 2012
I found LinkedIn extremely useful for finding people at companies I was interested in rather than submitting through the generic email or submission form. Find a mutual connection with someone in recruiting at your target community and ask for an introduction.

Mango Polo
Aug 4, 2007
Could you (or anyone for that matter) link some profiles that you think are well-written? I'm looking at rewriting my own page, so it'd be nice to have examples of what works/what doesn't work.

TouchyMcFeely
Aug 21, 2006

High five! Hell yeah!

Thanks for posting this. I've had a LinkedIn account for a while but haven't done much with it since I didn't really see it as much more than a business focused Facebook.

Looks like it has the potential to be a really good resource that deserves more attention than I've been giving it.

Put in a request for membership to the Stairmasters and will be plugging along on updating and completing my profile.

Kudaros
Jun 23, 2006
This may be helpful for me in the future. At the moment I'm pursuing a PhD in ECE - with a physics background (master's) and I already have 6 years of research experience with publications and what not. I've had a few recruiters contact me in the past, but always for things that are more appropriate for someone in a vocational school. The groups I'm in (I don't participate anymore, really, I'll be doing this for a few more years) and my skills don't really indicate that I have the skills being considered - though I do have some related skills I suppose. For example, I'll list some topics in condensed matter and spectroscopy and get an offer to monitor air circulation equipment at GE. I suppose I haven't networked enough in the desired fields...

In any case, is it worth it to pay for the upgraded version of Linkedin?

Edit: one additional question - Should my profile be 'specialized', as in restricted to my area of primary concern when it comes to jobs? For example, say I'm interested and somewhat involved in the craft brewing community - would it be a poor idea to network with people associated with that industry and join groups and such?

Kudaros fucked around with this message at 19:52 on Feb 4, 2013

HiroProtagonist
May 7, 2007

Econosaurus posted:

How do I know if somebody is a recruiter, especially for a field I'm interested in?

They tend to make themselves visible. Almost always it's in their listed title on Linkedin.

Mango Polo posted:

Could you (or anyone for that matter) link some profiles that you think are well-written? I'm looking at rewriting my own page, so it'd be nice to have examples of what works/what doesn't work.

I'm not sure if it's kosher to do that--to see most profiles' information, you have to be logged in to Linkedin, and even at the most anonymous settings, Linkedin still tells people the general industry and geographic location of their visitors, as well as tracking #s per week.

I don't want to freak out any innocent people with a goonrush.

Anonymizing a profile as an example might be an option, but it'd still be accessible through easy Googling.

Any middle ground suggestions?


Kudaros posted:

In any case, is it worth it to pay for the upgraded version of Linkedin?

Edit: one additional question - Should my profile be 'specialized', as in restricted to my area of primary concern when it comes to jobs? For example, say I'm interested and somewhat involved in the craft brewing community - would it be a poor idea to network with people associated with that industry and join groups and such?

No idea about the premium features myself, as I said in the OP. Hopefully someone else has paid for them and can give feedback.

Re: networking, it's absolutely not at all a bad idea. Just don't go overboard unless you earn a living off of craft brewing, I'd say.

Another one of the benefits of Linkedin as I see it really is the ability to treat your profile as a "resume, but not-resume," or in other words, putting information and detail that would be considered irrelevant or inappropriate on a formal resume.

Networking is never a bad thing, and if something helps you network more, it's automatically good. Like I said though, keep in mind that you come off as a crackpot if your profile reads like a resume but is 75% about totally unrelated poo poo to what you do for a living.

Kafka Esq.
Jan 1, 2005

"If you ever even think about calling me anything but 'The Crab' I will go so fucking crab on your ass you won't even see what crab'd your crab" -The Crab(TM)
A relative of mine is a high level executive recruiter, would it be okay to get a recommendation from her?

totalnewbie
Nov 13, 2005

I was born and raised in China, lived in Japan, and now hold a US passport.

I am wrong in every way, all the damn time.

Ask me about my tattoos.
Redacted screenshots?

HiroProtagonist
May 7, 2007

Kafka Esq. posted:

A relative of mine is a high level executive recruiter, would it be okay to get a recommendation from her?

Absolutely. Get it yesterday, especially if you're currently job-hunting. I'm assuming you have different last names, but it might be worth asking her to not make it obvious you're related. She should know that already, but you know her and I don't so it's worth saying.

totalnewbie posted:

Redacted screenshots?

I considered that, but see above about Googling phrases from the profile making it pointless as an anonymizing method.

Someone could offer up their profile for critique if they're brave and create an example that way, but as I'd prefer not to link SA with my profile directly I assume many people probably feel similarly.


vvvvv no problem! good luck!

HiroProtagonist fucked around with this message at 23:26 on Feb 5, 2013

Kafka Esq.
Jan 1, 2005

"If you ever even think about calling me anything but 'The Crab' I will go so fucking crab on your ass you won't even see what crab'd your crab" -The Crab(TM)
.

Kafka Esq. fucked around with this message at 05:57 on Apr 26, 2015

Temascos
Sep 3, 2011

Will be trying the LinkedIn approach for a while as job applications take a while to process. Just registered onto Stairmasters so that'll be interesting to see. :)

RTB
Sep 19, 2004

Thought I’d share something about LinkedIn that people often overlook.

A good headline gets you noticed
Please please please update your headline. It's that little blurb of text that shows under your name/picture in search results. LinkedIn automatically creates a headline for you using your job title and company name. The vast majority of people don't even know they are allowed to make changes to improve their headline.

A good headline catches a reader’s attention and gives them enough information to decide that you’re someone they really want to find out more about. Pretend you’re a recruiter looking to hire someone to design your new consumer gadget. Which of the following two people are you going to be more interested in meeting?

John Doe - Product Designer at Apple Corp
-or-
John Smith - Product designer responsible for creating the original iPhone, a world-wide best seller and cultural phenomenon

If I’m the recruiter, I just clicked on John Smith’s profile and never gave John Doe a second thought.

Nether Postlude
Aug 17, 2009

His mind will keep
reverting to the last
biscuit on the plate.
Membership pending for the goon group. :V

Very glad the OP made this thread - a lot of good advice too. I moved to NYC earlier this year and finally completed my LinkedIn profile. Joined a bunch of work-related groups. I got a job a week and a half later. My resume's no great shakes, either.

The caveat to all this is that you've got to live in a place that has jobs. People can't complain and say that LinkedIn doesn't help if they live in an area with no opportunity to begin with.

Nether Postlude fucked around with this message at 17:56 on Feb 6, 2013

Azuth0667
Sep 20, 2011

By the word of Zoroaster, no business decision is poor when it involves Ahura Mazda.

kitten smoothie posted:

Curious if anyone's used the premium stuff (mainly the "Job-seeker" package) and have any opinions on it?

It's not worth the money. I was given premium when I graduated from college as a parting gift from career services. It was convenient but I didn't notice an improvement in my job search from before when I had premium and now that I do not have premium. For recruiters its definitely useful because of the messaging but for seekers not so much.

E: The breakdown.

Who's viewed my profile: This is interesting but not very useful. Its nice to see who viewed your profile to gauge who it is attracting but the non-premium view is fine. You don't need to see the entirety of who looked at it to tell if its attracting who you want.

Full Profiles: I thought this was awesome because I could see all of those people who I was barely connected to but it really isn't needed you can always ask for an introduction from one of your higher connections.

Full Name Visibility: Useless, no one gives a poo poo what my common full name is.

Premium Search: It makes searching more convenient but you can make up for it by putting in more time to your searching and picking through companies/jobs.

Profiles Per Search: Pointless I'm trying to find a job not a person/profile, good for a recruiter.

Search Alerts: Also pointless if you are serious about finding a job you search every day. You don't need any more spam than you already get.

Reference Search: Also pointless, merely talking to people and asking them to introduce you to someone else is enough.

InMail Messages: Very nice for a recruiter, I found them to be useless as recruiters were already happy to respond to me.

Company Introductions: Again pointless, you want a connection with someone working for the company who can recommend you for a job not just "the company".

OpenLink: I turned this one once and immediately got messaged by someone trying to run an MLM so I turned it off right away.

Profile Organizer: Handy for organization but nothing you can't do yourself with simple files on your HD.

Priority Customer Service: Yeah this is BS you get the same customer service no matter what and its mediocre.

Azuth0667 fucked around with this message at 21:01 on Feb 6, 2013

HiroProtagonist
May 7, 2007

Azuth0667 posted:

E: The breakdown.

Thanks for posting this! I'll add it to the OP.

Onaemus
Feb 3, 2013

HiroProtagonist posted:

You can copy and paste your resume, but it's better to distill your experience and position responsibilities into narrative form. No more than a short paragraph or so; about 5-6 sentences should do it. In other words, just enough to give people a good idea of your previous experience without being overly wordy. Bullets don't really scan as well on a website profile, and putting in paragraph form condenses it a bit so that people are more likely to read it all too.

Thanks OP for the superb thread. I was looking into LinkedIn for a while and from what being recommended to me is exactly like you said. You want your experience to be a short summary highlighting your achievements and skills that you acquired. Concise and to the point is best. Company's recruiters are also look at your skills that being vouched. It doesn't really tell a whole story but I guess it's important for them to know that.

Defenestration
Aug 10, 2006

"It wasn't my fault that my first unconscious thought turned out to be-"
"Jesus, kid, what?"
"That something smelled delicious!"


Grimey Drawer
Bookmarked, joined stairmasters.

I am actively searching right now and I want in on this recruiter train so bad. I have 3+ years experience in a rather niche area of publishing (rights/permissions/licensing).

HiroProtagonist would you be open for doing private critiques if I send a PM?

close to toast
Dec 12, 2006

Do you recommend reaching out to potential hiring managers before you've made any formal contact with them? I was researching a job yesterday and stumbled on the profile of the senior manager of the group I'm interested in joining. I also noticed that he looked at my profile this morning.

I haven't sent in the application yet (plan to do so by end of day), and I'm being recommended by another employee he's not connected with. Should I send him a request and/or a message expressing interest? I suspect the answer is yes, so my real question is how do I position it? Thanks!

ETA: He's also connected to my current CEO, ha!

close to toast fucked around with this message at 00:11 on Feb 9, 2013

Azuth0667
Sep 20, 2011

By the word of Zoroaster, no business decision is poor when it involves Ahura Mazda.

close to toast posted:

Do you recommend reaching out to potential hiring managers before you've made any formal contact with them? I was researching a job yesterday and stumbled on the profile of the senior manager of the group I'm interested in joining. I also noticed that he looked at my profile this morning.

I haven't sent in the application yet (plan to do so by end of day), and I'm being recommended by another employee he's not connected with. Should I send him a request and/or a message expressing interest? I suspect the answer is yes, so my real question is how do I position it? Thanks!

ETA: He's also connected to my current CEO, ha!

I would make contact, make sure you research and understand what the senior manager has contributed to the company. Use that information to start a dialogue and state your interest in working with them.

HiroProtagonist
May 7, 2007

Defenestration posted:

HiroProtagonist would you be open for doing private critiques if I send a PM?

Please do! PM me whenever you want.

close to toast posted:

Should I send him a request and/or a message expressing interest? I suspect the answer is yes, so my real question is how do I position it? Thanks!

You guessed it. :)

As far as positioning goes, it's likely you're overthinking it. A simple message such as "Hi, I'm interested in [JOB TITLE] at your company. I have/am [QUALIFICATION 1], [QUALIFICATION 2] and [QUALIFICATION 3]. If you are interested in reviewing my full resume, I would be happy to send it to you. Please let me know via email at [YOUR EMAIL ADDRESS] at your earliest convenience. I appreciate your time, and look forward to corresponding with you in the future. Sincerely, [YOUR NAME]" is really all that's required.

Good luck!

Azuth0667 posted:

I would make contact, make sure you research and understand what the senior manager has contributed to the company. Use that information to start a dialogue and state your interest in working with them.

Personally, I would see this as a little weird. By all means, research the company and pepper any solicitations with relevant information that you find, but researching someone specific is probably both more than a little difficult and may potentially come off as inappropriate to the person you're contacting. (read: easy to come off as creepy.)

They're representing the company, not themselves. I would suggest focusing your interest accordingly.

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TheLizard
Oct 27, 2004

I am the Lizard Queen!
I could be a walking advertisement for Linkedin. Two years ago, I applied for a job and passed the phone interview with HR. While I was doing my research on the company, I went to their LinkedIn page and noticed that I had a first degree connection. Odd, I thought. I didn't think I knew anyone there.

It was a colleague from 2 jobs back who was a managing director at this new company. I shot him an email via LinkedIn, and when I walked in the door for the interviews, everyone I talked to knew who I was. Needless to say, I got the job.

It might take years to payoff, but it does!

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