Today, I share a post with you from Neal Schaffer ( March 16, 2009). Enjoy.
I have been blogging about LinkedIn for several months now, and I just couldn’t help but notice the increased attention there is about LinkedIn in the media. In essence, all of the media are saying that you need to be on LinkedIn to find a job. Is this really the case?
I will be honest with you that I found my last job through The Ladders despite five busy months of ramping up on LinkedIn. LinkedIn itself is merely a database. You signed up for it, so what? Did you fill out your profile? Invite people? Join groups? Did you actively network?
You see, LinkedIn is merely a tool in your arsenal to assist you in finding a job and nothing more. After all, LinkedIn isn’t hiring you, but companies and recruiters are. And companies and recruiters also have their own web sites. And they advertise on other sites. Some are starting to Twitter. So LinkedIn is not the only game in town.
That being said, if you understand that most jobs are found through the “Hidden Job Market” (read “What Color is Your Parachute” if you don’t understand this), then the key to finding your job is, simply, networking. And if you don’t understand networking, you are not alone. Most people that I meet at networking events or through LinkedIn communications still are a little lost. But, in reality, networking is simple: connecting and communicating with people.
Now, when I say connecting, you don’t necessarily have to make them your 1st degree connection. But you need to reach out and communicate. And I don’t just mean with recruiters. Use LinkedIn to get back in touch with old colleagues and classmates, join groups, find people with similar interests, etc. The key to networking is to be in contact with like-minded individuals with whom you can hopefully create a genuine relationship out of. If they don’t live near you pick up the phone and call them! I have made many a friend through “virtually” meeting them.
And that is what LinkedIn is all about: an immense database of professionals like you, and many of them open to networking and helping you out. There is still a lot of bad press about open networkers like myself, but I am always amazed about how other open networkers are willing to help out despite not knowing each other.
Cross the virtual divide. Reach out. Exploit LinkedIn for what it is and start networking! Only then can you say that LinkedIn may have helped out your find your next job.
Jason Alba is considered one of the top experts on Linked. In an article by C.G. Lynth, he uses Alba’s advice on mistakes you maybe doing when using Linkedin for your job search. Check out this practical advice on LinkedIn profile pitfalls.
LinkedIn Profiles: Avoid the Six Most Common Mistakes
By C.G. Lynch
May 13, 2009 — CIO — In the midst of the recession, many job seekers have spent more time on LinkedIn to connect with colleagues, customers and partners in an effort to land a new gig. Unfortunately, many people commit common errors in their LinkedIn profiles that cost them new opportunities, says Jason Alba, CEO of JibberJobber, a company that provides web-based tools for managing your job search.
Alba, who recently released a DVD called LinkedIn for Job Seekers, shared with CIO.com the six most common mistakes he sees on LinkedIn profiles. Here’s how to spot trouble in your profile and fix it.
1. Don’t Get in Picture Trouble
Many people choose not to use a picture on their LinkedIn profiles. While some of you have your reasons, it’s a mistake for the typical user, Alba says. Some common concerns: Perhaps you don’t want to disclose your ethnicity, or you don’t consider yourself photogenic.
“Some situations are justified in not using a profile picture, but in the end I encourage people to include one because it shows you’re comfortable with yourself,” Alba says. “It also makes your profile a lot more personable.”
Alba recommends a professional headshot for LinkedIn, rather than the picture of you in front of a mountain or lake that you utilize on Facebook. In addition, if you’re a job seeker, odds are that you will meet your prospective employer in a face-to-face interview, so that picture of you twenty years ago that you like to leave up there — that needs to be replaced.
“Sometimes people are floored when they see the person if they left a really old picture up there,” Alba says.
2. Write a Descriptive Professional Headline
When you edit your LinkedIn profile, you have what Alba calls a “professional headline” right beneath the name. The common mistake here (as shown in the picture below) is to simply put your name and title. He believes you should use something catchier. Instead of saying, “project manager for X company,” say something more specific: “I manage complex projects involving IT and marketing.”
When people search for you, they will see this professional tagline, and it might decide whether or not they feel compelled to click on your name and see your profile, Alba says.
“Think of yourself as a marketer, and this is where your big ad appears to the world,” Alba says.
3. Properly Label Websites Displaying Your Work or Blog
LinkedIn offers you the ability to list the websites where your work might be displayed. This is a great option if you keep a personal website with a resume or a blog. But when you go to edit the website descriptions, Alba recommends dispensing with LinkedIn’s default descriptions of “my website” or “my company.” Those descriptions aren’t a compelling read for employers, he says.
Instead, when you edit your “websites” section, LinkedIn provides a drop down menu (see picture below). Click “other,” and you can upload the link and describe it as you see fit. Instead of “my blog,” you might write, “my blog on complex project management.”
4. Consider a Vanity URL
Maybe you haven’t changed the default URL that LinkedIn provides for your profile. Especially if you have a common name, this will make your name after the LinkedIn address appear with a bunch of ugly code and numbers. If you have to give your LinkedIn profile address over the phone, or you wish to print it on your business card, it should be as concise and self-explanatory as possible, Alba says.
“It literally takes 30 seconds, and it makes your profile look more on purpose,” Alba says.
(When you edit your LinkedIn profile, go to the “public profile” section to create your LinkedIn URL of choice).
5. Finish with a Strong, SEO-Friendly Summary
The “summary” section of your LinkedIn profile could be the biggest missed opportunity for the majority of job seekers, Alba says. While this section has a 2,000 character limit, Alba suggests packing as much about you and your abilities into it as possible.
In reality, the ability for people to find you will depend on LinkedIn’s search engine linking your name to certain search keywords. So (staying with our repeated example), a project manager might want the term “project management” to appear a few times throughout the summary.
“Most summaries are a couple sentences or a couple paragraphs, and they’re missing out,” Alba says. “The more you put in the summary, the better your SEO is.”
Remember that you’re in a crowded field of applicants. Alba recommends that you put in short “problem, action and results” stories that show how you contended with challenges that helped your business succeed.
While Linkedin JobInsider is a sophisticated tool, Linkedin also offers another tool for quick and easy job searches. Read what Phil Rosenberg has to say about how to use these tools in your job search.
Jobs Tab: At the top of any LinkedIN page, you see a Jobs Tab. By clicking it, you’ll have access to simple and advanced search tools that connect to SimplyHired, a job board aggregator.
SimplyHired is a job board aggregator, which crawls thousands of other job boards, aggregates listings. SimplyHired claims they have the most jobs on the planet (I believe them). You’ll get a very broad view of job postings from the major boards, Craigslist, and many niche boards.
Not only does SimplyHired crawl the net for new job boards, it encourages job boards to submit feeds, to list new jobs on smaller sites quickly. SimplyHired pulls jobs from job boards, company pages, online classifieds and other data sources.
SimplyHired has partnered with both LinkedIN and Facebook to integrate job search with online networking. For instance, clicking “Who do I know?” will instantly reveal whether your old cube-mate back at that awful job you used to have is now the hiring manager for the job you want. In a broader sense, it works in a similar way to the LinkedIN Jobsinsider feature, but it’s even easier to use.
LinkedIN Advanced Search: Click Job Tab on the top LinkedIN page, and use the Advanced search features to find hiring managers with specific titles, specific companies, industries, geography, or skill sets.
Let’s say you’re a Controller in Boston looking for work - you probably want to talk to CFOs and VPs of Finance. Search for the key words CFO and segment by only listing contacts that are close to Boston.
Maybe you’re a Java developer in Minneapolis. You probably want to see which other companies are Java shops, and maybe find some Project Managers or Directors of Application Development. Search for Java and segment by searching close to Minneapolis. Take your list of Java shops as your Target company list.
Maybe you’re a Manufacturing Manager for an Auto OEM, and you’re open to move. Search for OEM, under the industry dropdown Automotive, and see what companies appear. Then individually search those companies one by one to see who is likely to be close to your prospective hiring manager.
With a reasonably sized database and LinkedIN Advanced search, you can find Kevin Bacon or Elvis.
Article by Phil Rosenberg, President, reCareered & Rainmakers Global and courtesy of reCareered blog.
If you have been using the internet to help with your job search, you have already visited job boards like Monster, Craigs List and others. How would you like networking assistance with these job boards? What if you could use your Linkedin network to find out who you know at the company where the job is being offered; find out more about the company itself and network your way to the hiring manager and bypass the HR department? Do you think your Linkedin network could give you an edge over your competition?
The Linkedin JobsInsider will give you that advantage! Once you download this tool, you can use Linkedin JobsInsider to coordinate with CareerBuilder, Monster, Hotjobs, Dice, CraigsList, SimplyHired, and Vault and other major internet job boards.
Whenever you view a job listing on a known job site, the JobsInsider opens a side pane in your browser. In the JobsInsider, you will automatically see your inside connections to the company that is offering the job. You can then use these connections to help your job search and introduce you directly to the hiring manager. Here’s how to download Linkedin JobsInsider.
Go to the bottom of any Linkedin page. Click on the JobInsider Tab and the “Download It Now” button below “IE Toolbar 3.0″ if you use Internet Explorer as your browser or “Firefox Toolbar 3.0″ if you use Firefox as your browser. Restart your browser once the download has been completed and installed on your browser.
How to use Linkedin JobsInsider with your Job Search
Visit any of the job search websites compatible with LinkedIn’s JobsInsider tool. These include Monster, Craigslist, CareerBuilder and many others.
Search for jobs in your field. A pane on the left side of the page will show you Linkedin’s JobsInsider and any connections you have with people in that company.
Use this tool to identify valuable contacts within the companies you are seeking employment from.
You now have in your hands a intergrated tool that uses powerful technology to help assist you in your job search.
Before we examine the actual Job Searching Tools of Linkedin, let’s summary what you have done so far in these Linkedin exercises. To provide a summary I turn to Guy Kowasaki for his comments on how to use Linkedin in your job search.
1.Increase your visibility.
By adding connections, you increase the likelihood that people will see your profile first when they’re searching for someone to hire or do business with. In addition to appearing at the top of search results (which is a major plus if you’re one of the 52,000 product managers on LinkedIn), people would much rather work with people who their friends know and trust.
2.Improve your connectability.
Most new users put only their current company in their profile. By doing so, they severely limit their ability to connect with people. You should fill out your profile like it’s an executive bio, so include past companies, education, affiliations, and activities.
You can also include a link to your profile as part of an email signature. The added benefit is that the link enables people to see all your credentials, which would be awkward if not downright strange, as an attachment.
3.Improve your Google PageRank.
LinkedIn allows you to make your profile information available for search engines to index. Since LinkedIn profiles receive a fairly high PageRank in Google, this is a good way to influence what people see when they search for you.
To do this, create a public profile and select “Full View.” Also, instead of using the default URL, customize your public profile’s URL to be your actual name. To strengthen the visibility of this page in search engines, use this link in various places on the web> For example, when you comment in a blog, include a link to your profile in your signature.
4.Enhance your search engine results.
In addition to your name, you can also promote your blog or website to search engines like Google and Yahoo! Your LinkedIn profile allows you to publicize websites. There are a few pre-selected categories like “My Website,” “My Company,” etc.
If you select “Other” you can modify the name of the link. If you’re linking to your personal blog, include your name or descriptive terms in the link, and voila! instant search-engine optimization for your site. To make this work, be sure your public profile setting is set to “Full View.”
5.Perform blind, “reverse,” and company reference checks.
LinkedIn’s reference check tool to input a company name and the years the person worked at the company to search for references. Your search will find the people who worked at the company during the same time period. Since references provided by a candidate will generally be glowing, this is a good way to get more balanced data.
Companies will typically check your references before hiring you, but have you ever thought of checking your prospective manager’s references? Most interviewees don’t have the audacity to ask a potential boss for references, but with LinkedIn you have a way to scope her out.
You can also check up on the company itself by finding the person who used to have the job that you’re interviewing for. Do this by searching for job title and company, but be sure to uncheck “Current titles only.” By contacting people who used to hold the position, you can get the inside scoop on the job, manager and growth potential.
By the way, if using LinkedIn in these ways becomes a common practice, we’re apt to see more truthful resumes. There’s nothing more amusing than to find out that the candidate who claims to have caused some huge success was a total bozo who was just along for the ride.
6.Increase the relevancy of your job search.
Use LinkedIn’s advanced search to find people with educational and work experience like yours to see where they work. For example, a programmer would use search keywords such as “Ruby on Rails,” “C++,” “Python,” “Java,” and “evangelist” to find out where other programmers with these skills work.
7.Make your interview go smoother.
You can use LinkedIn to find the people that you’re meeting. Knowing that you went to the same school, plays hockey, or shares acquaintances is a lot better than an awkward silence after, “I’m doing fine, thank you.”
8.Gauge the health of a company.
Perform an advanced search for company name and uncheck the “Current Companies Only” box. This will enable you to scrutinize the rate of turnover and whether key people are abandoning ship. Former employees usually give more candid opinions about a company’s prospects than someone who’s still on board.
9.Gauge the health of an industry.
If you’re thinking of investing or working in a sector, use LinkedIn to find people who worked for competitors—or even better, companies who failed. For example, suppose you wanted to build a next generation online pet store, you’d probably learn a lot from speaking with former Pets.com or WebVan employees.
10.Track startups.
You can see people in your network who are initiating new startups by doing an advanced search for a range of keywords such as “stealth” or “new startup.” Apply the “Sort By” filter to “Degrees away from you” in order to see the people closest to you first.
11.Ask for advice.
LinkedIn’s newest product, LinkedIn Answers , aims to enable this online. The product allows you to broadcast your business-related questions to both your network and the greater LinkedIn network. The premise is that you will get more high-value responses from the people in your network than more open forums.
For example, here are some questions an entrepreneur might ask when the associates of a venture capital firm come up blank:
Who’s a good, fast, and cheap patent lawyer?
What should we pay a vp of biz dev?
Is going to Demo worth it?
How much traffic does a TechCrunch plug generate?
These additional ideas came in through comments from readers:
1.Integrate into a new job.
When people start a new job, ordinarily their roots aren’t that deep in the new company. However, with Linkedin, new employees can study fellow employees’ profiles and therefore help them get to know more people faster in a new company. (contributed by Vincent Wright)
2.Scope out the competition, customers, partners, etc. This seems like it’s a no-brainer, but you can use LinkedIn to scope out the competition’s team as well as the team of customers and partners. For example, your competitor’s vp of marketing came from Oracle…she’ll probably believe that business is war. (Kev)
You might be thinking, “Why has he waited so long to introduce specific Linkedin Job Tools?” That’s a great question. Let me answer it.
When you open the Job tab on any Linkedin page, you will see some Tips from the Linkedin program on how to improve your job search efforts. They list three items:
Complete your profile
Get Recommendations
Expand your network
Using the actual Linkedin Job searching tools is the frosting on the cake. To be successful with these tools, you must first make the cake. You must establish your presence on the internet by creating your Linkedin Job Searching Profile. You must offer reasons or credibility that you can perform by getting Recommendations from others. You must expand your network of people to help support you in your job searching effort. Without the cake, the frosting falls flat.
A few facts about what you have already done in your Linkedin Job Searching effort.
Did you know that people with 20 or more connections are thirty-four times more likely to be approached with job opportunities than people with less than five connections?
All 500 of the Fortune 500 business are represented on Linked and most of these are represented by director level people.
According to Julie Erich, an insurance industry recruiter, Linkedin contacts can make all the difference in getting a job. She says a hiring manager may have 200 resumes on her desk. She is busy and is looking for ways to reduce that pile to set of good candidates. The mention of a mutual friend on Linkedin can cause that hiring manager to move your resume to the top of the pile. It can get you an interview where otherwise your resume remains on the pile.
You have been making the cake. In the next post, I’ll summarize what you have learned from Linkedin and set the stage for using LinkedIn’s powerful Job searching tools.
Before we look at our last Strategy on using Linkedin to help find a job, let’s summary some of our recent posts on the tools you can use within Linkedin to expand your network quickly and easily. Here are six Linkedin tools we discussed that will save you time and effort in building your digital job searching network. Unlike some other aspects of a job search, these tools allow you to control the entire process!
Import Your Contact Using the Add Connection icon in Linkedin, you can import your email addresses from your Outlook program as well as email servers like Gmail, Hotmail, Yahoo and others. Linkedin will import a complete list of your emails and addresses from these programs. You select the people you want to invite to your job searching network. You can use a standard Linkedin invitation or create your own, more personalized invitation to join. With one click you can send email invitations to all your selected contacts.
Download the Outlook Tool Bar You can integrate your Linkedin program with an Outlook Tool Bar. What will this do? Once you have this tool bar, every email you receive through Outlook will indicate in the upper right hand corner of the email if the person is already on the Linkedin program. Click on this icon and you can immediately send an invitation to join your Linkedin network. I have done this with emails I have received from some of the leading experts in my field. It takes only a minute to generate the invitation right from Outlook. Now you have opportunity to connect with some of the best experts in your industry and invite them to be part of your network.
Invite Colleagues and School People When you complete your Profile in Linkedin you added information about the companies where you have worked and the schools where you have attended. Using the Add Connection tab, Linkedin will search its data base to find matches for people who are associated with the same companies or who attended the same school as you. Connect with them so they can help you in your job searching process.
Manual Invitations You can use a manual form of inviting others to join your network. You create an invitation message and use Linkedin to send it to six people at a time. Repeat this process as often as you like.
Groups The Linkedin program has hundred of groups–people who join together around a common theme or issue. When you join a Linkedin Group, you now have access to thousands of other like minded people who are already members in that group. With these group members, you have the opportunity to both, give and receive from others; show your expertise as well as get more exposure for your job search from a group of people who have your same interests at heart.
Recycle Your Invitations For a variety of reasons, not everyone will respond to a first invitation to join your network. You may want to invite them a second time. Inside of your Linked Profile, you can click on “Sent” items. There you can find out whom you have invited and the current status of the invitation, Pending, Accepted, etc. You can decide if you want to resend an invitation.
Conclusion
To do you see how easily and quickly you can use this Linkedin to expand a network of people to help with your job search? It doesn’t have to be time consuming or laborious. It can be a process you control.
With unemployment at a 23-year high, job seekers need to expand the ways in which they search, say career and workplace experts. These days setting up and maintaining an online presence is often critical to finding work. But for an accomplished professional, it might seem daunting to build up a social-networking presence from scratch. Here’s how to do it:
Claim your name. Before someone else does it, you’ll want to “claim your name” on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter, says brand strategist Catherine Kaputa and author of “U R A Brand.” You’ll also want to try to purchase the domain for your name — they typically are priced starting at less than $10. This way, you control how you will be perceived, says Ms. Kaputa. If your name is taken, use a slight variation, such as a middle name or initial, suggests Ms. Kaputa. Then begin developing a Web presence, starting with basic information like your résumé and then add to it as you go. (Note—in a future article, I will show you how to use a blog strategy that can make this Tip easier and faster than creating a website—Al Hanzal)
Practice prudence. Sree Sreenivasan, a professor of digital media at Columbia University Graduate School of Journalism, made the decision early on to limit himself to three social-networking sites: Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter. “There is just not enough time,” he says. “Pick two or three, then cultivate a presence there.” If you only manage to join one site, most experts agree that it should be LinkedIn. “It is the one crucial place to be if you are a business executive, professional or entrepreneur,” says Ms. Kaputa. It might help you land a job. For example, more than half of the candidates in Salesforce.com Inc.’s recruiting process are connected to someone at the company, says Scott Morrison, director of recruiting programs. Many of those connections come from the 98% of the company’s more than 3,500 employees who have LinkedIn profiles. “It’s a tremendous resource for us and our recruiters,” says Mr. Morrison.
Choose connections wisely. You’ll also want to choose your network carefully; only add people you actually know or with whom you’ve done business. Whether it’s on LinkedIn, Facebook or any other networking site, “it’s much more of a quality game than a quantity game,” says Krista Canfield, a LinkedIn spokeswoman. A recruiter may choose to contact one of your connections to ask about you; make sure that person is someone you know and trust.
Consistency is key. You’ll need to update your profile regularly. “Curate [your online profile] the same way you would curate your one-page résumé,” says Mr. Sreenivasan. And remember, many recruiters Google candidates before the interview, says Ms. Kaputa. Google yourself to see how you stack up on the Web compared with others and whether your “personal brand” is compromised in any way.
For more information, write to Elizabeth Garone at cjeditor@dowjones.com
Company profile pages on LinkedIn can help you tune into a company’s comings and goings, executive relationships, key business facts, and more. Here’s how to search and use LinkedIn Company Profiles to your best advantage.
By C.G. Lynch
February 12, 2009 — CIO — As the recession turns workers of all industries into job seekers, many users of LinkedIn, the social network for professionals, have begun examining the service’s free company profiles to see who recently joined (or left) organizations, prepare for interviews and learn about what skills particular employers value in prospective candidates.
Since LinkedIn Company Profiles launched nearly a year ago, more than 160,000 companies have established a profile page. If you’re job hunting in today’s struggling economy, LinkedIn company profiles can help you learn about companies on your short list in greater depth, according to career experts who have analyzed the service. Another bonus: a careful examination of LinkedIn contacts who have recently joined (or worked at) a company can help you determine if the organization would be a good fit, as you compare your own qualifications against the candidates hired.
After using the service and talking with experts, we’ve constructed a quick primer on LinkedIn company profiles and how you can start utilizing this resource right away for job hunting or networking.
HOW TO ACCESS LINKEDIN COMPANY PROFILES
1. Log into your LinkedIn account.
2. Click on the “Companies” tab, located on the top (center) of your LinkedIn homepage, just to the right of the popular “Answers” tab.
3. Once the companies page loads, type in a company name (such as “GE” or “Microsoft”) into the search bar. In the search results, beside the company you want, you might see a number inside a parenthesis, such as (41), which would indicate that 41 jobs are available at that company.
4. Once you’re on the company page, look over to the right column for a “jobs” section to see if any positions are available.
Interested in a company? Learn who you are connected to there.
One of the most helpful features of the LinkedIn company pages: they list your LinkedIn contacts (known on the service as “Connections”) who work at a particular company. This list will include your first degree connections (your immediate contacts on LinkedIn), as well as second degree (friends of friends) and third-degree (friends of friends of friends) connections.
“It really can help you network your way in,” says Jason Alba, CEO of Jibberjobber.com, a career management firm, and author of the book I’m On LinkedIn — Now What?. “Even if someone is just two connections away, it puts that information right at your finger tips, and you can act on it by connecting with them directly and asking questions about the company.”
The LinkedIn Company Profiles page shows your “Connections” who work at the company. Above, we see some Microsoft contacts.
Look at the comings, goings, movers and shakers
A company website wouldn’t exactly want to broadcast the names of everyone who just joined or left the organization. But luckily for LinkedIn company profiles, users will keep you informed.
“The real value of LinkedIn is that it’s a self-updating database,” says Phil Rosenberg, president of reCareered (a career consultancy). “You can see who is coming in, and it might help you figure out what the company is looking for [in candidates].”
As Rosenberg notes, a LinkedIn company profile displays a list of new hires at the company (and links to those new hires’ public profiles). This information is purely user-driven, as (presumably) employees who take a job at a company will update their profile information to reflect that change. That user profile information will communicate that information to LinkedIn company profiles.
“By looking at their background, it can give you some hints and clues as to potentially what the company’s new strategies are,” Rosenberg says. “It also shows how the company is trying to deal with its specific business problems.”
LinkedIn also shows changes and promotions that have occurred at the company internally. This could be something as trivial as a minor title change, but culd also be serious promotions or moves between departments.
The past employees section doesn’t provide a ready-made timeline for when employees left the company. In order to piece that information together, you have to click on users’ profiles and see what information exists on their public profiles. There’s an upside to this feature, however: many of the people listed in the “past employees” section could be in your connections (1st, 2nd or 3rd).
“You can use that information to understand lots of things,” Rosenberg says. “You can reach out to them to help you understand what the culture is, or maybe who you will be interviewing with if you score an interview. It’s an excellent way to learn behind-the-scenes personality issues, so you can make a good impression.”
Go to school on your company of choice
LinkedIn company profiles have another convenient feature: key company statistics gathered by Standard and Poor’s Capital IQ. Down the right side of the company profile, look for a list of vital data such as revenue, headquarters (and key geographic locations), approximate company size (in employees) and primary competitors. The latter category may spur new ideas for job opportunities as well.
Above, Microsoft’s key statistics on its LinkedIn profile page.
This data component shows that LinkedIn has interest in making company profiles a competing product to services such as Hoover’s, experts say. In fact, when you you consider the other social components (mentioned above) of LinkedIn company profiles, it might provide even greater user value than Hoover’s.
“I think that LinkedIn companies could make Hoover’s obsolete eventually,” Alba says. “If you’re a job seeker preparing for that interview, they’re giving you a significant amount of information on LinkedIn that you now don’t even need to search Googlefor.”
Taking the time to answer other Linkedin participant’s questions not only allows you to contribute, it also builds credibility and expertise within your network. Years ago, when I left my carpeting business, I volunteered for one of those “Ask an Expert” websites as an expert regarding carpet. I answered 50-60 questions per year. It’s been several years, since I left that program. I still get emails from people I have helped with my knowledge.
Click on Answer a question and you will get a drop down box that also indicates what recommended Categories are most likely for your expertise. These are based on the groups you belong to and the information in your Profile. You will also see a heading, New Questions from Your Network. In addition, you can click on any of the Categories listed on the right side of the page and answer questions from these Categories.
Your Options
Use one ofthe above options to see a list of current questions. Click on an appropriate question. You will have two options.
You can answer the question Answer Yourself
You can Suggest an Expert and provide the person with a connection or a resource that can help
While Answering the question yourself bring some immediate attention to your own expertise, connecting other people resources is also a powerful way of building relationships. Do you remember the last time someone hooked you up to the right person? You felt good that you had a solution to your problem. The expert felt good that they were recognized for their expertise and could now establish a new relationship with you. And the connector felt good because they were helpful even though they did not have the immediate answer.
This Week’s Expert Status
You will also see a list of This Week’s Experts with a Star logo behind their name. The person asking a Linkedin questions gets to select the best answer to their question. When you are choose as the best answer you get a “Point” from Linkedin. After several “points” you are given Expert status of the week—just a little extra bonus of recognition. Here are the Linkedin rules for getting Expert status.
Earning expertise is easy:
1. Find questions in the areas you know–Browse questions to find categories familiar to you
2. Answer those questions–Remember, private answers won’t help you earn expertise
3. Every time the questioner picks your answer the best, you gain a point of expertise–The more points of expertise, the higher you appear on lists of experts.
To be continued, your comments are always welcomed…
