Job Hunt Tips 5: The First 2.5 Hours and $27
LINKED IN Stage 2 - 2 hours plus occasionally over time
Start acquiring connections. Search for your current firm, and other firms for which you’ve worked. Invite people you know to link to you. DON’T invite folks who won’t recognize your name. Anyone you invite can click a button to say they don’t know you, and LinkedIn will ban you with just a few of these.
Then search your alma maters (you can search by the years you were there) to find classmates.
Send me an invitation to link.
I always write a personal note when I send an invitation. I don’t want to take chances that my name isn’t an immediate trigger for them. Just a sentence about finding them on LinkedIn and remember when you worked together on the widget project, or commiserated over the term project in Econ class.
For the time being, accept all invitations to link. There are some folks who work LinkedIn very hard to acquire links. Having a few of these folks in your network will be helpful when you start using LinkedIn for your job search.
Later, you’ll be more selective. I tend to reject invitations from recruiters, but then, I’m not using LinkedIn for a job search. Your experience may vary. Needless to say, meaningful links are more valuable than strangers. You will have difficulty using a recruiter to get your job inquiry forwarded to someone, which is the purpose of having a link. (more on this later)
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