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Path to happy employment, contact by contact on LinkedIn

LinkedIn, the networking site for professionals, can raise your profile and help you find a new job, but only if it is used properly

If you?ve ever attended a local business networking breakfast in hopes of making new contacts or finding a new job, you?ll be excused for wondering why you were there. But there are alternatives to chatting with a dentist and a criminal lawyer and a few other people unrelated to your line of work (that is, unless you are a dentist or a lawyer).

LinkedIn, the networking site for professionals, has become a vast business gathering place. With more than 259 million members in over 200 countries, LinkedIn offers users, most of whom pay nothing for the service, a chance to hone and increase their contacts. Users can also limit their connections to others who can best help them professionally.

It is, essentially, the networking breakfast moved into a virtual world, and available virtually to the entire world. ?People need resources to find a job and contribute to their community,? said LinkedIn?s co-founder, Allen Blue. ?We want to create an economic opportunity for every professional.?

But that promise won?t mean much if the site is not used correctly. Failing to keep a LinkedIn profile updated, ignoring connection requests or connecting with the wrong people can make the site as pointless as attending that local business breakfast.

First, the basics: LinkedIn allows users to create a compelling text-and-multimedia narrative of their life and work. It can be updated at will, can be any length and it will often pop up in a Web search of the user?s name. ?This is the next-generation r?sum?,? Blue said. Once you sign up for the service, LinkedIn guides you through the process of creating a profile. Write an extensive one that speaks to your strengths, skills and experience. Add multimedia, such as slide presentations and links to examples of your work.

Use the headline space (right under your name) to create a compelling statement about yourself. Instead of ?third assistant stock clerk,? be creative. ?Inventory manager with over 20 years?

experience? will generate more views. As Ted Prodromou, a San Francisco consultant and author of a book on how to use LinkedIn, says, ?What would you type in, to find you??

Prodromou also recommends looking at profiles of people who work in similar fields and appear to be successful in attracting contacts, and then use similar keywords. ?There?s nothing wrong with reverse-engineering,? he said. Add a photo, preferably a professional one. According to LinkedIn, a photo will increase by 11 times the likelihood that recruiters will click on your name. And if you list more than one professional position, you?ll increase your visibility 12 times.

LinkedIn will automatically let all your contacts know every time you change your profile. That means colleagues will be automatically informed when you change jobs or add some additional experiences. Unfortunately, your colleagues will also be told that you?ve taken a new job even if you simply changed the title of your existing one.

To avoid embarrassing congratulatory emails for something you haven?t done, turn off those notification settings before you post your profile. To do so, hover your cursor over your picture in the upper right. Then click ?Review,? next to ?Privacy and Settings.? On the ?Profile? tab, you can turn off these ?activity broadcasts? or decide who should see them if you want to leave them on. This is also where you can choose to let others know you have viewed their profile (or prefer to be anonymous), determine how much of your profile strangers can see, automatically send profile updates to your Twitter account and other options.

To pique the interest of recruiters, keep your profile up to date. Add new accomplishments and suggest news articles for others to read in the ?Share an Update? field at the top of your home page. Don?t accept every invitation to join someone?s network of contacts. The point of LinkedIn, according to Blue, is not to amass the greatest number of contacts, but to connect with those you know and trust, who then can introduce you to others you may wish to meet.

But if you do receive an invitation to connect from a stranger, you may want to use it to your advantage. Jasmine Sandler, a New York-based owner of Agent-cy, an online marketing company, suggests you reach out to that person, schedule a phone call and see if there?s a reason to create a professional relationship.

Another way to increase your stature is to join interest groups. You?ll find them by searching for names and key words in the search bar at the top of the screen. Once you participate in a group, you can offer advice, contacts and news articles to group members, many of whom are likely to share your interests and career goals.

Join discussion groups that focus on particular companies at which you might like to work. If a job opens up, you?ll be able to call upon company executives that you?ve become familiar with in the group.

By commenting in groups, others will send your comments to a network of which you may not be a part, and your name recognition will spread. The strategy is to help others, and by so doing, more people will pay attention to you. One source of attention you may not want, however, is a relatively new LinkedIn feature called Endorsements. LinkedIn culls profiles and then suggests to your first-level contacts (those to whom you have directly linked) that they endorse you for skills LinkedIn?s algorithms think you may have.

Unfortunately, those suggestions can be inaccurate. For example, television engineer Mark Schubin once received an endorsement for his voice-over work, a skill he does not have and work he has never done. While you can refuse any endorsement and not list endorsements for skills you no longer wish to promote, Schubin and others in the ?Stop Endorsements? LinkedIn group don?t like the fact that their contacts will assume they have skills and jobs that they actually don?t.

?Turn off endorsements,? Prodromou said. ?They don?t add any value. I think they?ll go away.? Do these promotional strategies work? Several months ago, Prodromou started spending 30 minutes a day posting and updating on LinkedIn. He saw a 140% increase in people viewing his profile in the first 10 days and traffic to his personal website grew 400%. Three times as many people reached out to him for help and he picked up two new clients.

Sandler spends several minutes a day posting on LinkedIn. ?People find me on LinkedIn,? said Sandler, who gets the bulk of the clients for her marketing company from activity there. ?I open the site every morning.?

Eric A Taub

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First published on: 09-12-2013 at 05:04 IST
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