Continuing with the topic of Jumpstarting a second career, let’s consider introductions on LinkedIn and describe how experienced professionals should be leveraging them to jumpstart their careers – if they’re switching, or even if they’re staying put in the same field.
Yes, even if you’re in the very same career you started in, you can use LinkedIn to enhance your stature, effectiveness, and probably even your pay.
Let’s have a look at introductions and using them to build your career.
What I said
The earlier article had this to say about introductions for those starting a second career:
This is the end game – find the people that you need to reach in the new career, and then ask for introductions from those people that you already know and trust.
You don’t know who they know – but when you’re all on LinkedIn, you can find out, and then use those relationships to give your new career a leg up.
(and at the point of being repetitive, I’ll remind you that there’s a good number of articles about introductions in that archive as well…)
Because you’ve got those great connections, and can use LinkedIn to search, you have a beautify way to reach out in order to meet VIPs – the introduction.
The rationale
What’s easier, sending a note to someone you have never met before, or asking a friend to forward a note to someone they know?
Would you rather google a phone number and call someone out of the blue, or ask your friend Mary Smith to invite this person (that Mary knows) out to lunch?
Is it better to meet someone on your own, or through an introduction?
Ding – Ding – Ding!
We have a winner!
Hands down…
Hardly ever used though
And this is a shame because according to reliable poll data from last October, more than a third of LinkedIn users have never sent an invitation request through the system!
Many smart people have failed to latch onto the single best feature of the LinkedIn system – the ability to get introduced to other professionals. People that can help you find a new job or enhance your productivity within your current position.
The Introduction
It’s right there on the profile of people you find “Get introduced through a connection”.
Introverts love it because they can make contact without ever having to pick up a phone – but picking up the phone is a perfectly fine way to go about it if you’d like!
If you found the right person – the individual that could help you find the next job or get a leg up in your current job, wouldn’t it be great if you had a handy way to meet them?
Well you do!
Any questions?
And that’s the answer to the $64,000 question – and why LinkedIn is essential for restarting your career.
All of these items build on each other, and it’s essential to do each and every one of them, you don’t want to be picking and choosing.
If this seems like a great nugget of advice but you’re left with a need to understand LinkedIn from beginning to end in one concise read, try “The LinkedIn Personal Trainer“. It’s perfect for the newcomer, and you have my guarantee that it will get you going with LinkedIn or I’ll refund the e-book purchase price – which isn’t all that much to begin with.
If you have a single question on the topic of introductions, leave it here as a comment and we’ll look at it together.
Next up – I’m going to take one more post and wrap this all up together with links to each of the articles so this makes just as much sense if someone comes back to it later.
But you guys are already forwarding links on to your friends, right?-)
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock