How To Use LinkedIn In Your Job Hunt

Ever Felt LinkedIn Failed Your Expectations? Here’s How to Fix That

Delighted to have a moment here to talk about LinkedIn with you and how to use it properly so that you get what you came here for - you get to where you want to go in your job hunt! 

When I look out on the international student space I don't see LinkedIn receiving its highest value. And as a result, people are not empowered in their job hunts. 

Within The Career Accelerator Program -  my flagship training for getting great work experience and getting paid for it - we are all about using tools in the right way to empower our job hunts. 

LinkedIn comes down to this one question: 

“Are you using LinkedIn proactively or as a passive recipient of messages?”

Are you mostly just getting sales pitches?

Ever hesitated to check someone’s LinkedIn page or messaging someone in your dream company? 

That’s what's going on in a lot of the lives of job seekers in the LinkedIn game.

This is an OK place to start! If you're in school and you haven't been out in business for a long time, you probably ARE kind of new to LinkedIn.

And I agree that when in a different culture and you're trying to also keep up with schoolwork and family, social life, LinkedIn probably doesn't become your favorite place to "hang out".

And when you do, it's mostly this inbound messaging situation and you're probably ignoring the information.

Now you can continue to ignore that information - that is fine - but here is where I recommend a change: 

Use LinkedIn in a proactive way. 

And maybe I need to be the person here that tells you that

YOU CAN DO THIS. 

The #1 Reason to be Using LinkedIn

Use LinkedIn to find anyone you want and generate that relationship!

Reach out to them in a systematic way and get them to know you, like you, and want to support you in your career either by referral or by giving you the next step in that interview process, or by giving you an offer - all of this is possible on LinkedIn.

If you don’t know how to do this, it’s time to reach out to teachers and mentors - like you already do for all your courses anyway - and get this training.

Here’s an example of successful messaging from one of our Career Accelerator students. She wanted to work at the International Finance Corporation. Here’s one week in her networking life: 4 meetings in one day with IFC Directors:

So, what does it take for you to experience the true benefits of LinkedIn? I think it comes down to you having a change in mindset. 

Decide that you are going to skip to the front of the line by networking.

Give up your old, unexamined assumptions about needing permission to speak to decision-makers.

On LinkedIn, there's no secretary or administrative assistant separating you and your future colleagues. LinkedIn presents an opportunity for you to be outbound and communicate 1x1. 

Most people are passive recipients of a lot of unwanted marketing messages. That's their LinkedIn experience.

BONUS TIP: Reason to Do LinkedIn Correctly: Finding Your Professional Passion

Here, my goal is to train and transform lives and to bring people into awareness - principally through The Career Accelerator Program and other means like this video - that there is a way to have control over your job hunt and be successful.

And it's not just about those companies that would sponsor you or would not sponsor you.

Instead, let’s just go back to basic principles: what work do you dream of doing, and in what companies do you dream of doing it? 

You can use LinkedIn as a platform to discover what those things are that you want to do and don’t want to do. But if you already know, now proceed to go out and pursue them.

And so LinkedIn is very much the opportunity for you to be outbound and proactive in your job hunt through messaging others and speaking with them to simply discover your likes and dislikes.

BONUS TIP: Train as a Future Leader to Influence Others

LinkedIn is a place for you to be outbound in your job hunt: to message people you don't already know and get to know them. By this I mean systematically using the filtering of LinkedIn to identify exactly who you want to work with or for, and then messaging them, setting up a call or meeting, and having the call or meeting. 

And not messaging via InMail, but actually, a direct message to them requesting to connect and thereafter to meet. 

At the initial stage, our goal is simple: to get them to become aware of our existence. 

All of your future great mentors and leaders start off as strangers in your life.

We hope that they're not always strangers. 

And so you have to ask yourself: at what point do you want that transition to happen?

Do you want to meet decision-makers sooner or later in your job hunt? 

So, one idea I'll float here: take steps now to get them to know / like / support you.

This is a proactive, outbound exercise, and I want you to change your belief on how to use this social media platform so that you're getting what you want out of your job hunt.

I want you to have meetings on your calendar, as many as you want - I want you to have an abundance of them.

Now I have a program called Job Offer Messaging - not quite the whole Career Accelerator Program - which focuses on messaging and walks you through how to understand messaging and what that's all about.

And you're welcome to check that out. I've got a link to that here, below somewhere.

You can check out that link and see if that’s a fit for you.

I want you to look at your month and see that there are meetings on your calendar with the exact companies with whom you want to be speaking, with the exact people who have the influence and power to hire you. 

Your job in those meetings then is to get the individuals of your choosing to know you, to like you, and to want to support you.

The order of operations is 1), identifying them, 2) messaging them to connect, and then 3) following up on that message with a request to meet and it - could be for coffee. It could be for video.

Today, video discussions are viewed as being on par with meeting face-to-face, if not to close a large multi-million dollar transaction, at least to get a person hired. 

So, this is actually an amazing golden era for networking because you don't actually have to fly to New York or San Francisco to have a meaningful meeting.

LinkedIn for you is an outbound platform.

It's a place for you to generate as many meetings as you want, and there is an art and a science to doing this.

My goal in this post is to give you an awareness that there is this outbound activity that can be part of your job hunt, and that outbound activity is not limited to people that you already know, or your recent grads or just your alumni, but really focusing on the people who are the strangers, who aren't in your network yet, who are the senior executives. 

Getting them on your radar and you on theirs. 

And then to take them through a process of getting them to know you, like you, and want to support you.

The actual networking call itself is important. Exactly what to say - I cover in exquisite detail in my courses.

At this moment, I just want you to know at this moment that this is possible.

Conclusion

Your networking meetings of today are your business meetings of tomorrow. Learn to network today - prepare for tomorrow.

LinkedIn is one of the great ways for you to get your dream job. It's not just about posting.

You know, posting, responding to a job posting on LinkedIn.LinkedIn is much richer than that 

LinkedIn is about you deciding where you want to be. It's about you deciding your own fate in your job hunt.

How many calls a month? A week, a day do you want to have with people?

Getting those setup, getting them on the calendar. Confirmed. 

Having those calls, discussing the next steps in that relationship. 

This is all within your ability. 

So I want you to think differently, change your mind about how you are using LinkedIn right now and go out there and claim your future because you’ve earned it.