My career has been helped by a website. LinkedIn.com helped me land a job! In 2004, a cousin who lives in Israel sent me an invitation to connect on the professional networking website LinkedIn.com. LinkedIn is a business oriented social networking site, mainly used for professional networking. As of September 2006, it had more than 7 million registered users, representing 130 industries.
The way you can join LinkedIn is to be invited by an existing user to register. Registered users maintain lists of contacts of people they know and trust in business (these are called connections). Your lists are then used to provide a network of contacts which can be used in several ways. Each person's network consists of their direct connections, each of their connections' connections (called 2nd degree connections) and also the connections of 2nd degree connections (called 3rd degree connections).
You can use your network to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by the user's direct contacts, or by individuals connected to a contact at the 2nd or 3rd degree. You can sort your connections by city or country, profession, current or past companies, universities attended, by their hiring authority, etc.
I accepted my cousin's invitation and filled out my professional profile. I invited my friends and colleagues to join and a few accepted. My cousin is a self-employed business development consultant in Israel and she told me she relies heavily on her professional LinkedIn network to generate new client leads. At the time I was a sales representative for a wireless company and I had a set portfolio of accounts in which I had to penetrate and expand. I also wasn't looking for a new job so I didn't have much use for LinkedIn.
Unfortunately, in 2005 my job was downsized due to a corporate merger. When I was ready to look for a new position, I started applying for jobs through the career websites Monster.com, Careerbuilder.com and other smaller sites. After applying to several jobs and not hearing back from the recruiters for several weeks, I realized that this type of job search was not producing results.
I was narrowing down the companies I wanted to work for and I really only wanted to work at one particular company at their corporate headquarters. This office is located only three miles form my home and this company offers tremendous career growth potential and excellent benefits. I applied for a position through the company's corporate website and was called to schedule a phone interview. After the phone interview, I didn't hear from the company and two months later received an email that I was not hired.
I still knew that I wanted to work for the company and I also believed that I was more than qualified for the position I applied for. I remembered that I belonged to LinkedIn.com and decided to network my way into the company. Some members of LinkedIn post their email addresses on their profile. They do this because they want to receive invitations from other users and grow their networks. Many articles about professional networking advise that this type of connecting, between two people who really don't know each other, dilutes the credibility of professional networking sites. I have to disagree with that. I started to build up my connections at LinkedIn through people whose email addresses were posted on the site. Some of these people already had 500 plus connections in their networks.
When I built my network to 150 people, I conducted a search of LinkedIn users who were currently employed at the company I wanted to work at. I found a few people who were two degrees away from me who worked in the same department where I wanted to be hired. If you are two degrees away from a contact, you must send an email to your contact requesting to be introduced to their contact. All of these emails are sent through the LinkedIn website.
I was introduced to the person who works at the company. He was extremely helpful in my obtaining another shot at this job. He was able to send my resume directly to the Human Resource manager. I was scheduled for another interview and this time I was asked to interview in person with my potential supervisor. Besides that, my LinkedIn contact gave me some helpful hints for the interview and put in a good word for me with one of the managers who interviewed me.
I am happy to say that I was offered a position at this company and I truly believe that I had an edge over the competition because I was connected to the right person through LinkedIn. Even though I didn't personally know my contact at the company, he was willing to help me because I communicated to him that I really wanted to work at his company. I would do the same for someone if I was contacted by a LinkedIn user. The users of LinkedIn generally want to help each other and realize that networking is a matter of giving and receiving.
