LinkedIn and How to Make it Work for You

The LinkedIn phone application is free and you'll see notifications when anyone reaches out to you. This will save you the time of logging in to check either on your phone or laptop. This still allows you the opportunity to choose whether to ignore the individual or send a reply.

Here are a few points I wanted to highlight below about how LinkedIn can work for you. No, I don't work for LinkedIn, though I use it often and felt a need to write this post.

1) When I was an Enterprise Sales Executive prospecting customers and reaching out to VP or C level contacts, LinkedIn was one of my many prospecting tools.

LI helped determine who I was going to target both by email and calling directly into. Ultimately, many of my sales were a result of my success through LinkedIn.

In fact, co-workers didn't understand how I was getting people to speak with me through LI. It does take some effort, though it can pay off in the end.

2) In addition, on occasion, potential customers reached out to speak with me as the in territory sales contact about the solution I was selling and this led to sales.

 3) One thing I've noticed is folks have an email address on LinkedIn for a company they'd worked several years ago...or several jobs ago. Make sure your contact information is up to date. Otherwise, you may have missed opportunities to contact friends, former colleagues, job opportunities, and/or potential customers.

4) If you're considering a job change or at the very least open to hearing about new opportunities, having the phone app, along with all your updated information is crucial. Also, add your mobile phone number, especially when considering new job opportunities. You can always take it down after you've accepted and started a new job. 

5) If your current company email address is all you have on LinkedIn and you know or believe your employer is monitoring your emails, then it's best to change the email address to your personal email account.

If it's mandated company wide you post your corporate email address on LI, then provide an alternate email on your LI profile and/or reach out directly to the recruiter from your personal account to the email or phone number they've provided. This is how 50 percent of our candidates reach us. 

Lastly, as a recruiting firm, we'll reach out to potential candidates and oftentimes hear back long after we've filled the role. They simply haven't logged into LinkedIn.

In many cases, these same individuals were more than qualified for several roles we were reaching out to discuss with them. In several cases, the base pay alone was 20-40 percent greater than there current base pay, not including the greater OTE (On Target Earnings) upside almost always equaling double the new base pay.

This issue can be ameliorated by downloading the free LinkedIn mobile app.

Melanie Wise, CEO
melanie@resourcewiseconsulting.com
www.resourcewiseconsulting.com

melanie@ResourceWiseCo