I’m not sure how things are with you, but it looks like a good time to show everyone how to work with the job posting feature on LinkedIn.
The system is very powerful for both the candidate and the employer – and I’ll show you how.
Finding a posting
That’s easy enough – just click on the “Jobs” tab within LinkedIn and you’re off.
There’s a “Jobs Search” box right there, but you’re not going to use that at all – look under the “Search” button for the word “Advanced” – that’s what you want. (Just as in searching for people you want to use the advanced search most every time)
Check out the options:
- Location
- Title
- Industry
- Company
- Keywords
If you can’t come up with some good criteria, you’re not trying hard enough!-)
Small market
The Rochester NY market has not pounced on this feature yet, so it’s still reasonable for me to enter a local zip code and search for all jobs in the area – there about 40 on the system. You might not be able to do that, but give it a try.
And I found a good posting that will work for this example.
Start a fresh search and type this in: “Chief Operating Officer” (quotes included)
When I do that, I find 7 of these positions across the globe – you should see one from RailComm. We’re going to look at this posting in depth.
(And yes, you’ve got to use the site to see it – I’m not going to cut and paste it in here – you’ve got to get the experience;-)
Standard information
Yes, it’s got all the standard information you’d like to see in a job posting, and this one refers readers to the RailComm web site for a complete picture. And that makes sense, why re-publish the same information all over – better to send everyone to one place.
But that’s not all we see…
The Job Poster
This job was posted by Nicki Denny (and yes, I checked with her to use this example), and LinkedIn tells me that I am a 3rd degree connection of Nicki’s.
I’ve got access to all of the information I expect to find out about LinkedIn connections – what more could I ask for?
The Company
Well – yes, I’d love to find out more about the company – and LinkedIn associates the job posting with the company information!
Who I connect with at the company, where people in the company have worked, historical information about the company.
Isn’t that going to make my research easier? What else could I hope for?
An introduction
Ah yes – that’s what LinkedIn is great at, isn’t it?
After looking things over, I find it very interesting that “Joe Denny” is the President and CEO of the company, and Joe is a 2nd degree connection of mine!
Checking into that relationship – I know and connect to three very strong business leaders that each know Joe. The relationship that I have with these three individuals is such that if I called them up and asked for help in setting up a meeting with Joe, I’d expect them to readily agree.
And I’m pretty sure Joe knows Nicki…
So if I were interested in this position, I wouldn’t be submitting a resume – well, maybe I would – as a formality after I had a meeting with Joe and Nicki.
A better way
And isn’t that a better way to go about it?
For both candidates and employers?
As a candidate, you’re making a great impression – leveraging the solid business relationships you have.
As an employer, wouldn’t you like to pre-screened candidates through your business contacts?
(I didn’t mention it, but if I wasn’t right for the position, isn’t one of my three connections going to bring that up, and if they felt strongly about it, do you think they’re going to introduce me?…)
Working for you
I’m not in the market for a COO position right now, but if I was, you know how I’d be going about it…
Have you searched LinkedIn for jobs?
Have you had success on either side of that table?
We’d all like to hear about it – please leave a comment – and anonymity is fine.
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock
My LinkedIn network is getting smaller, how about yours?
Oddly enough, after talking about how one can prune connections, I noticed that my “entire network” on LinkedIn has shrunk below 5 million. I don’t record those sorts of statistics because they really don’t mean much to me, but I remember it being in the 6 million range – and that’s a lot of people to lose!
So I thought we might want to explore the topic…
Finding out
How big is your network?
Here’s how to check:
- Click into “Contacts -> Network Statistics”
- Read;-)
Ok, so I wanted an excuse to use bullets today – it really is simple – if you know where to look, and if you’re interested in finding out.
This page lists your direct connections (1st), your connection’s connections (2nd), and friends of friends of friends (3rd).
Just a year’s worth…
My direct connections – 361 as of today, so I’ve got one for almost every day of the year. And that’s not a bad figure for using the site for over 6 years.
My third level network – 4.7 million.
And the top 10 connectors in my network probably account for a huge portion of that.
It’s neither good nor bad – it just is.
Sliding downward
I had read some reports from uber-connectors towards the end of last year that they were adding connections and dropping in network size – and wondering what was going on.
It does seem clear – for some reason, the third level network is dropping in size.
Likely answer
I’m not much for conspiracy theories, and a couple items could have direct bearing:
- Duplicate accounts
- Reigning in abuse
- Abandoned accounts
The first is a real issue, but probably can’t account for even a 10% drop in connections. In any group of 20 or more, I’ll find at least one user with a duplicate account – it remains a big problem.
The second is a potential, and I just don’t know how much excess goes on or gets corrected.
The third – that’s where I think it comes into play. Take all accounts that have no valid email address and have not been accessed in more than 2 years and auto-clean them…
That could be enough to drop several million users from the rolls. (and is a good thing to do)
But this is all conjecture.
Your network?
How does this compare to what you’ve seen? Drop a note – let’s compare activity.
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock