A blog series that gets you up to speed on LinkedIn related posts and news articles from across the web ranging from tips-and-tricks to product news. We’d love to hear your comments both here in the blog post as well as in tweets.  Follow us on Twitter as well.

Liz Ryan from Business Week’s “The Workplace” column has an insightful post for those who’ve wondered why sending in your resume doesn’t necessarily get you that job interview. Liz outlines six different ways you can increase those chances of landing a job interview after you’ve sent in your resume.

Start with LinkedIn to see whether one of your first-degree connections is connected to a relevant person (someone who works in the department where there’s an opening, a peer in another department, or best of all, the hiring manager) in the hiring department. If you do have a two- or three-step relationship to that inside person, ask your first-degree connection to make an introduction for you. (You can do this by clicking on the “Get Introduced Through a Connection” link on your “target” person’s profile page.)

The easiest way to get started would be on LinkedIn’s “Advanced Search” page, where you can search through specific keywords to locate the right contact at the hiring company.

Tips #2 and #3 in the post explains how important it is to do your homework about the company or industry when looking for a job. LinkedIn Company Profiles lets you browse and research companies or even industries that you’d like to work for. Clicking through a company profile shows you current or former employees from that company who you’re currently connected with and can pass your resume to the right folks within the company. For example: check out LinkedIn’s Company Profile.

As Liz summarized, finding a job interview is more a direct result of your attempts to find contacts at that company who can put in a good word for you, and less about how great your resume is.

There is an element of luck in getting an interview, but you can do more than toss a résumé into the hopper and wait for a phone call. You can work assiduously to find contacts who can put in a good word for you, make introductions for you, and fill you in on the issues that are top-of-mind for the employer you’re targeting. When you spot a job you know you’d love and would thrive at, don’t hesitate to call on your network to help make it happen. That’s what your network is there for!

Search your LinkedIn Network for jobs, people and references

Kathy Robinson runs TurningPoint Career Consulting, working with mid- to executive-level job seekers who need help marketing their talents, finding interesting opportunities, and getting results in their job search. As a former HR executive, she’s seen the way that LinkedIn has changed the entire process of recruiting, for good. Read more success stories from our users here.

As a career coach, LinkedIn has proven to be a killer app for job seekers whom I counsel, with its immediate access to contacts, groups, events, and thought leaders.

The first thing I ask clients do is optimize their profile, then connect to as many relevant connections as they can, even if they’ve only worked with a former colleague briefly but have a trusted relationship. Other tips? Participate in groups.  Don’t just connect “to” people, but connect “with” people, letting them know what you’re looking for and turning a LinkedIn invitation into a longer conversation.

That’s the approach that worked for one of my clients Christine Midwood, a talented technology program director and product manager. In addition to networking with most of her real world professional connections on LinkedIn, and joining groups, she researched LinkedIn for company information and potential connections before applying for any jobs. She saw a dramatic difference in how many phone interviews or offers she got from traditional online boards (5% response rate) versus online and offline networking (31% response rate). During her search, she made a weekly goal of 3 meetings with her connections, to learn what might be happening in the job market. When she saw a job posting for what is now her current job, she looked up and connected to a former coworker through LinkedIn, who introduced her to the hiring manager. (connect with your former colleagues here)

As Christine found, LinkedIn’s power goes way beyond a profile and some contacts. For example, if you’re interested to know how people broke into a certain field? Look up their backgrounds on their profiles, and find out “how they did it”.

I can’t imagine the job search process for my clients today without the power of LinkedIn, can you? Share your experience in the comments below.

Have a LinkedIn experience you’d like to share with us? Submit your story here.

Kevin Nichols is a Sr. Litigation Paralegal, President & CEO of KLN Publishing, LLC.  He’s also a columnist for The Globe Newspapers in the East Bay, and he writes for various publications nationwide.  As an active LinkedIn user, Kevin also moderates two LinkedIn groups, one of which he used to pull off a networking event for free. Check out his experience below. You can also find other stories from our users here.

LinkedIn is the premier social networking site for business professionals. It is the most consequential tool that I use to reach my business goals. As the moderator of the Downtown San Francisco Networking Group, I organize monthly and quarterly events for professionals who work downtown to network to create business opportunities for them.  I am personally concerned that a large percentage of our group is unemployed due to the economic downturn, some for almost a year! So, I decided to organize an Employment Symposium that will focus on improving resume writing skills, interviewing tips, how to prepare for, how to dress for, and how to follow up an interview. Because these individuals are unemployed, cost is of paramount concern. Skeptics suggested that this may take at least 3 – 4 months to plan and cost thousands of dollars.  Here is how I have use LinkedIn to organize this event for free in a month, like I have done for all of my previous events for my group.

First, I needed a location that could hold at least a hundred people comfortably so I updated my status indicating such. Within minutes, a colleague – Janine Mixon, Dean of Student Affairs at Golden Gate University – said that she might be able to get me space for no charge. Through my networking group, Janine introduced me to her colleagues David Javate (Assistant Director of Sales) and Ami Readdy (Recruiting and the Associate Director of Business Career Coaching), who both agreed to allow us to use their facility for free, provide resource materials, career guidance and placement information, etc. as parting gifts, assistant with obtaining panelists and with completing the planning.  After another status update, I obtained two businesses that agreed to sponsor the food for the event. Finally, upon searching through my LinkedIn contacts, I have leaned on my Fortune 500 recruiting contacts to donate their time by being panelists / facilitators. The moral of this story is, “Use your network to make the impossible, possible”.

Have a LinkedIn experience you’d like to share with us? Submit your story here.

[Ed. note: This is a guest blog post from Ron LaPedis, Principal at Seacliff Partners and describes his journey from being laid off to becoming an entrepreneur with some help from his LinkedIn network]

I am an entrepreneur who was always afraid to quit my day job. I sold rock concert T-shirts in college and even after I began work in the Silicon Valley, I started selling high-end fountain pens from Realpens.com and writing articles for industry magazines. These were little more than hobbies until my first pink slip showed up, after I’d spent nearly 29 years in the industry. After exiting the building and taking stock, it was obvious that networking was the answer. The scuttlebutt was that few people were being hired off the street and recommendations to managers were worth their weight in gold. Using LinkedIn’s advanced search feature, I reached out to old friends and co-workers for references but instead discovered that many of them were independent consultants and actually making a living at it.

While still searching for a full-time job, I began the work to become a trusted adviser on my favorite topic – protecting businesses and people when something goes wrong. I used LinkedIn Answers to get tips and tricks from my contacts on how to set up a consulting business including the need for liability insurance and why I should incorporate as an LLC. To prove my credibility, I used the WordPress application on LinkedIn to publish my regular blog post entries on to my network. An Australian friend of mine saw my posts on LinkedIn and recommended me to a company in Los Angeles. My first contract came quickly, in fact before the ink was dry on my incorporation papers. After that I was requested to author an online article and was paid to write and give two educational sessions at a technology conference – and this all started with a LinkedIn contact.

I am absolutely convinced of the power offered by LinkedIn and I tell all of my friends to build their networks, use the search feature to find people at targeted companies, and get recommendations from co-workers.