How Can You Use LinkedIn Contacts for Job Networking?

By Larry French

The effectiveness of LinkedIn is its usefulness in helping you network electronically. LinkedIn can be a great tool in your job search strategy for making contacts with potential employers. This can be achieved by enlisting the aid of people you know as you continue to build your Profile.

Use Your Contacts

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Go to the Contacts tab of your Profile and begin to build your network. Again, you may find going to the LinkedIn Learning Center helpful. In the Resources section under User Guides you’ll find the New User Starter Guide. This function of the Learning Center can walk you through the process of starting your LinkedIn networking Contacts. Follow the linked prompts to go to pages where you have the options of downloading existing databases of contacts you already have in your other social media. Using the New User Starter Guide you can import webmail contacts and establish a base for your LinkedIn networking.

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As with many of the LinkedIn tools, if you don’t wish to import your webmail or other social media contact lists you can simply start setting up Contacts manually. Using the field at the top of your tool bar, use the scroll down to select ‘People’ and then type in the names of anyone you’d like to see is already in LinkedIn from your existing network of contacts. If you come up with someone who is already in LinkedIn you’ll be able to use various associations you have with that person or their email address to initiate an Invite to Connect.

Expand Your Network

You can also use the Contacts tab of your tool bar to Add Contacts, look for Colleagues, and People You May Know on LinkedIn. These features will allow you to pull up various windows that offer possible contacts you can choose to pursue. Using the Contact function of your LinkedIn Profile, you can begin to seek out not only people you know but specific individuals who may be associated with a particular employer you are seeking employment with. LinkedIn adds this electronic aspect to your job search strategy.

Image provided from Larry’s LinkedIn Profile

Similar to the networking you do personally; LinkedIn gives you the opportunity to reach out to people. Using the Search features in parts of the tool bar you can begin to seek people whom you can form associations with and work toward your ultimate goal. You want to build as wide a network of contacts as you can. For example, you can see by my own Network Statistics that I’ve gained a substantial amount of reach across the www through my contacts. Keep in mind this took me about a year to accomplish but you can do the same.

Hopefully, what you learn about using LinkedIn will help you make that bridge from online applications and make personal contact. It’s been helping me and that’s what this series is all about--sharing what I’ve learned so you can do it too. If you find this series helpful engage in discussion at the CBE Blog, http://cbeworkforce.blogspot.com/ or if you’re already on LinkedIn join the ProNet Central Florida Group.

Larry French is a novelist, speaker, editorial writer, and content provider of Science, Social Studies, Language Arts, and Mathematics curriculum. He is now seeking a publisher for his first novel, Time Will Tell, The Awakening which blends his love of history and science and is set during the American Civil War. http://www.linkedin.com/pub/larry-french/12/213/534