The nation wakes up to another week of job losses with nearly 75,000 job cuts announced this Monday and over 500,000 job losses predicted for the month of January. In an interview with Stacy Delo of Market Watch, DJ Patil, Chief Scientist and Sr. Director – Product Analytics at LinkedIn, outlines three different ways job seekers can enhance their chances of finding the right job in this economy.
As DJ spells out in the above video, here are three ways to position yourself better to find that dream job:
1. Find suitable opportunities and similar connections:
LinkedIn has always been about finding the right professional connections who can either offer you business input or career advice. One of the easiest ways to identify those peers is to stumble upon “People You May Know” – a feature that can be found on the top right hand corner of your LinkedIn homepage.
LinkedIn can be used as a professional data mining tool, one that’s particularly valuable during the interview process. Search for peers with similar profiles, find people at companies you’re interviewing at and more.
DJ also reiterated an oft-repeated theme of building your network before you need it. As Jeremiah Owyang, Sr. Analyst at Forrester, spelled out in a recent post:
Unfortunately, networking doesn’t work this way, relationships take time, getting to know folks requires patience, and people are generally cautious –if not fearful– of Johnny come lately that is asking, rather than giving. Some people change their status message on their LinkedIn profile, saying they are now looking for jobs, and I question if it’s too late.
A professional networking site like LinkedIn eases you through the relationship building exercise through a slew of tools, chief of which is a webmail importer application that allows you to effortlessly bring online many of your real world contacts. Updating your status message on LinkedIn during your job hunt, will now be far more effective given the robust professional network you’ve built over time.
3. Build out a robust profile that’s in sync with your capabilities:
The last piece of the puzzle that’ll set you up for success in your job hunt is being found when hiring managers or recruiters are looking for talent such as yourself. The starting point is building an exhaustive LinkedIn profile that accurately reflects yourprofessional qualifications.
A common temptation in building a company is to go after too many businesses at once. The best path to business success, according to Hulu CEO Jason Kilar, is the narrow one.
“I’m a big fan of companies that know what they want to be and stay to that,” Jason told us. His online video service Hulu is a good example. The company’s mission is “to help people find and enjoy the world’s premium video content when, where and how they want it.”
Jason extends his affinity for focused business to LinkedIn. “LinkedIn took a narrow focus on the whole social networking scene,” Jason said, “and their focus was professional use cases.” LinkedIn’s unique purpose has helped Jason find business connections, qualified answers and talent ideally matched to his company.
How: Jason uses LinkedIn to find connections, get answers and hire talent
LinkedIn Tips from Jason
Tap your network to help a focused business model thrive:
• Find an inside connection using LinkedIn Search or Company Profiles
• Find answers to tough questions by asking the broader network at LinkedIn Answers
• Find talent suited to your corporate culture by posting open positions on LinkedIn Jobs
Here at LinkedIn, we are always looking for ways to make the world’s professionals more effective through the use of their network. Today, I’m happy to announce the first of several upcoming product features being built through a partnership with IBM’s Lotus, which extends the availability of LinkedIn functionality to Lotus Notes.
Here are three key LinkedIn features that 140 million Lotus Notes users can look forward to:
1. Network Updates
Keep track of your broader professional network through an integrated stream of LinkedIn Network Updates.
By using Network Updates to keep track of what projects are being worked on, what questions are being asked, and what connections are being made in one’s professional network, you can stay more engaged and up-to-date in your professional life. The LinkedIn Lotus Notes integration makes viewing your Network Updates a seamless part of your daily activities, by placing them within the inbox that you already use every day.
2. People Search
Another feature to supercharge your Inbox is the ability to use LinkedIn’s People Search with one-click:
Easily look up that new contact you’ve just made or the attendees of an upcoming meeting. You can even find contacts at a given company or with a given skill, just as you would on the LinkedIn site. So if you need that expert in mobile technology, open source, or Ruby on Rails, just put the right keywords into the search box to see who in your professional network can assist.
3. LinkedIn Profiles
Once you find who you need, you can also view their LinkedIn Professional Profile right within Notes:
Lotus Notes will make profile look ups simple by hyper-linking names to a one-click LinkedIn search. Just click on an unfamiliar name in an e-mail and instantly view the associated LinkedIn profile. And when you do find that right contact, the ability to send them a message or connect with them on LinkedIn is always available.
Those familiar with the LinkedIn Outlook Toolbar may recognize similar functionality. However, by working with IBM directly on the Notes integration, we’ve been able to make it richer, more seamless, and more robust. These are just first steps in a broad partnership that we’re announcing today with IBM.
As we pursue our vision of bringing LinkedIn to inboxes everywhere, we plan to work with other partners to bring a similarly rich integration to your favorite email client.
We look forward to your thoughts on these and future directions in comments to this post.
Everyone across America has been riveted to either their television screens, twitter or flickr feeds these past 24 hours, as 150 passengers & crew of a US Airways Flight survived a crash landing on the Hudson river soon after take off. All eyes are on the pilot, Chesley B. “Sully” Sullenberger, for his expert handling of the situation. CNN reports:
Passengers on the US Airways flight that crash-landed into the Hudson River Thursday afternoon praised the actions and courage of the pilot, a safety consultant with 40 years of experience in the aviation industry.
Kudos poured in from for Capt. Sullenberger in light of his courageous and calm handling of the situation. Mayor Michael Bloomberg of New York City, said:
“He did a masterful job of landing the plane in the river. He was the last one off the plane.”
Also, tape recordings of the radio traffic from Flight 1549 reported the pilot was “extraordinarily calm” during the event.
“There was no panic, no hysterics. It was professional, it was calm, it was methodical. It was everything you hoped it could be.”
Looks like the recommendation section of Captain Sullenberger needs some updating after today’s steady stream of kudos. Our best wishes go out to the passengers, crew and to our Hero of the Day – Capt. C. B. Sullenberger!
I’m sure you’ve heard of the concept “the wisdom of crowds”. Pretty cool stuff, right? Today, we’re launching a product that will allow you to leverage the wisdom of your professional network on LinkedIn.
Could you make decisions faster if you could ask a question to 500 professionals who fit the profile for your target customers?
What if you could test your marketing message on 250 small business owners in your region before launching your marketing campaign for the quarter?
Could you refine your go-to-market strategy if you could understand how the point of view of technology professionals varies depending on company size?
The idea of allowing you to quickly and cost effectively gather input and insight from the right group of people, is what is behind the new targeted LinkedIn Polls product that we’re launching today. Built on our inApps platform, LinkedIn polls allows you to create a poll, target it to a specific professional audience, and then analyze the results of your poll.
Some of the key features include:
See how poll results vary by looking at demographics. We know that all professionals don’t think alike, and that’s why we break down poll responses based on the demographics of respondents to show you how variables such as company size, job title, job function, age or gender change the way people respond to your question.
The ability to create a poll and send it to one of two groups: (1) send it to a target group of professionals ($50 minimum) or (2) poll your network (for free)
My Polls page allows you to easily find the results pages from polls you’ve answered in the past. This is where we archive all polls you’ve answered. If you want to see updated results from a poll you took a few days ago this is the place to go to.
We hope LinkedIn Polls helps you get the insights you need, from the right people, faster.
Sometimes business opportunities grow legs. Gregg Spiridellis found out in 2004 when a video by his digital studio, JibJab, took off. Though JibJab had been producing since 1999, their video “This Land” touched a nerve during the heated election year and was soon ubiquitous, even being played in Antarctica and the International Space Station. And this before the advent of YouTube.
Gregg was inundated with offers, emails… and LinkedIn requests. Having never heard of the site before, he sent off a “flaming” email to customer service. But Gregg now calls LinkedIn “the best thing in the world”, and uses it regularly to manage the growth of his studio. He’s used LinkedIn Jobs to recruit and find the best talent, saving tens of thousands in recruiter fees. He reviews polished profiles to compose job specs. And perhaps most impressively, he conducts competitive intelligence research on LinkedIn Companies to help reverse-engineer his own org as it grows.
JibJab is now making moves in the interactive greeting card business. Something they’re doing must look good to investors — they’ve just raised $7.5 million in new funding. Presumably none of that came from LinkedIn CEO and serial investor Reid Hoffman, though Gregg plans a penance for that hasty email if they ever meet…
In November 2008, we rolled out the new LinkedIn Search platform after many months of design and technical work. Listening to the LinkedIn community is extremely important to us, and search is an application that millions of LinkedIn users depend on to get their jobs done everyday.
It has only been a little over a month since the full launch, but the results of that effort have been amazing. We’re already seeing a huge increase in the number of searches on the site on a daily basis. As more and more people use the platform, they are discovering more of the more advanced features built into LinkedIn search.
In 2007 I wrote a popular blog post called 5 Tips on How to Search LinkedIn Like a Pro which walked through some of the basics of Advanced Search and how to use advanced features like Boolean search. These features are extremely powerful, and are fully supported in our new search platform.
However, for real power users, our old search interface had a limitation: you had to use the actual Advanced Search form to target specific fields for your queries. Not any more.
The new LinkedIn Search allows users to easily target specific fields directly from the search results page:
This makes it incredibly easy to iterate through your search, adding more specific terms and fields to help narrow your search, which is crucial to finding just the right people among an audience of 33 million professionals (and growing).
However, we know that real power users always want to go even faster. And to go faster, you need to move beyond the graphical user interface, and be able to control your search directly from the query box itself.
Now you can. The new LinkedIn search platform allows any query that can be executed from the user interface to also be executed straight from the query box using the new advanced search operators.
For example, let’s say that you wanted to search for designers who used to work at Apple or Google.
You could type
designer AND (Apple OR Google)
into the LinkedIn search box. That would give you every person who has the keyword “designer” in their profile, and either the keyword “Apple” or “Google”.
That’s a good query, but it will find people who have the keyword “Apple” or “Google” in their profile for other reasons. For example, maybe they never worked at Apple, but they have training and skills with Apple products. You can refine this with the “Modify Your Results” box, but that requires a large number of clicks and edits.
Now, with the new Advanced Search Operators, you can skip those steps and execute your query right the first time, straight from the search box.
Just type:
designer pcompany:’Apple OR Google’
The advanced search operator “pcompany:” tells the search engine to only look for the terms “Apple” or “Google” within the past companies field on the LinkedIn profile. This way, you’ll only see people who actually used to work at either Apple or Google.
With the new advanced search operator functionality, you can target first name, last name, current position, company, school, or any field supported by the LinkedIn search engine. A complete list of the fields supported is located on the LinkedIn Learning Center. We support fifteen advanced search operators already – more are planned in 2009.
We’ll follow up here on the blog with more great search functionality in the coming weeks. Now go out and query like a Pro!
Last year about this time, Kay offered some New Year’s resolutions on how to jump-start your career. As we kick off 2009, many are looking for the best ways to find meaningful employment, and a good place to start is one’s own network. A recommendation from a trusted colleague can outweigh a stack of Ivy League résumés. In fact, when Randall Rothenberg went looking for a Chief Officer for the Interactive Advertising Bureau in 2007, he turned to his LinkedIn network first.
“I realized … the place to go to begin that search was going to be my LinkedIn network,” Randall told us. “If anyone can lead me to the kind of person with the kinds of capabilities I was looking for, it’s this set of people.” Randall posted the job on LinkedIn and began filtering candidates.
In Florida, Patrick Dolan was searching for consulting opportunities in New York and came across Randall’s job posting. Not only did the job seem like a perfect fit for his skillset, but LinkedIn showed him a professional connection he shared with Randall. Patrick reached out to their common connection to learn more about the opportunity, and barely a month later, he had a corner office as Chief Administrative Officer, a position combining the roles of CFO and COO.
Randall highly values the services of executive recruiters and head hunters. But in this case, he estimates he saved up to $150,000 by turning to LinkedIn for this and another senior placement. Sounds like a fine way to hire the right talent and trim expenses during a recession.
How: Randall placed his Chief Administrative Officer and another SVP by conducting his own talent search on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn Tips from Randall and Patrick
Turn to your network to find the right employment opportunities:
• Begin your job search or talent search on LinkedIn Jobs
• Import your address book to reveal common connections at hiring companies
• Request recommendations from people who know your skillset best
• And of course, represent yourself with a robust Profile that showcases your experience
Some of you might have read my earlier blog post from last year on how LinkedIn can help you build a professional network that lasts. As we begin this New Year, I’d like to suggest four key ways in which LinkedIn can help you put your best foot forward professionally in 2009.
Be found by people looking for your skills, products & company
List your current and past positions & education. This helps the right people and opportunities find you and your products & services, faster.
Request recommendations for your work from your trusted contacts and customers. You can post them on your profile for the world to see.
Make sure your company is listed on LinkedIn. This is how customers, partners and future employees can find you.
Promote your unique skills, ideas and products & services with applications like Google Presentation and Slideshare.
Be closer to your trusted professional contacts
Import your online address book to connect to your trusted acquaintances who are already on LinkedIn.
Check your network updates to see who’s connecting to whom, working on what, traveling where, changing jobs and more. Send them quick notes to help, advise, congratulate and more.
Notify your network about what you’re working on – you’ll be surprised at the help and opportunities that can result from updating your LinkedIn Status.
Find the right career and business opportunities
Try the new LinkedIn search to find the employers, experts, partners and customers you most want to talk to.
Find and exchange ideas with like-minded professionals in the new LinkedIn groups. There are hundreds of thousands of groups on topics related to your career. Find the right one for you or create one.
Find out what people are saying about your company and other topics of interest with the Company Buzz app.
Whatever your career goals are in 2009, LinkedIn can help you be a smart, nimble and effective professional in today’s economy. Feel free to leave a comment or tips you’d like to share with the larger LinkedIn community. Wishing you all a very happy and productive New Year!
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