I joined LinkedIn while I was still employed, mainly out of
curiosity. I didn’t have many
connections and joined two or three groups that pertained to my job, one of
which was full of good advice and information. Since my lay-off I started
reading about people finding work through LinkedIn. So I thought I’d try it.
After all, you can no longer find work by looking in the newspaper.
Of course there are job sites on the web and I will be
researching those as well, but now I have a definite presence on the World Wide
Web. Did you know that many potential employers do look to see if you are on
the internet? It’s a good idea to have a more professional presence than just
Facebook or Twitter.
LinkedIn Training
I saw an ad for LinkedIn training called Linked Influence http://www.linkedinfluence.com/ by
Lewis Howe and that it was on sale in June, so I paid for it and received
access to a website with a bunch of interesting training videos. My profile was all wrong, it fact it was a
mess, so I cleaned it up, but I still wasn’t getting many views. Lewis said to
connect with every one you can, the more connections the better. I admit that made
me nervous, I don’t know a lot of people; after all, I had been working at the
same place (two different company names) for almost 33 years and I really didn’t
know much about networking. Then Lewis said to join a bunch of groups and maybe
start a few. Oh boy, I never posted in the groups I already belonged to.
Josh Turner then posted on LinkedIn about something called
Linked University http://linkeduniversity.com/
(which is geared more toward marketing) and offered a free series of ten
training videos about LinkedIn. Yes, I signed up, hey they’re free! Josh’s free
videos were also very informative and he gave some of the same advice as Lewis,
especially about connections and groups. If you want to join Linked University
for more information you do have to pay a fee http://linkeduniversity.com/learn-more/
.You can buy a monthly, annual, or premium account.
Now I’m following
that advice and it’s starting to work.
Using LinkedIn
I belong to quite a few groups now, half of them pertain to
CAD and EMS work; the other half to writing. I’m e-meeting a bunch of new
people and learning a lot of new things. Plus, I invite to connect with at
least 5 people a day and receive at least one new connection a day. My views
went from “9 people in the last 30 days” to “17 people in the last 15 days”.
And that’s with only 80+ connections. I’m now receiving messages about job
openings that I might be interested in. Pretty exciting isn’t it? I haven’t
gotten up the courage to start my own group yet, but I have a few ideas for one
or two.
I know that there’s a lot more to do, like actually apply
for jobs, researching companies, and doing interviews. But thanks to the
LinkedIn groups that I’ve joined I’m getting some good and some not so good
information on all of that.
If you’d like to connect with me:
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