ETP Manalapan

Similar to a reference letter, a LinkedIn recommendation is a powerful marketing tool. Each recommendation provides you with a silent sales person telling the world about your skills, business savvy or other qualities you possess, which enhance your marketability. Hiring managers, decision makers and potential clients relish recommendations regarding a person they may be interested in hiring.

by Thomas E. Kenny.

You have followed the advice of career experts and have "dug the well before you're thirsty." Preparing for your next job search by continually building and strengthening the relationships of your professional network. However, now that you are in a job search, you may be wondering how to leverage that network!

Asking your network for job leads is not a best practice of professional networking. Instead you need to find and determine jobs that you are a match for and then find advocates to assist you.

With over 36 million members and much media exposure, you would think by now most people would know how www.LinkedIn.com works.

Recently, I sent a LinkedIn invitation to someone I met. They wrote me back in being excited about joining my network on LinkedIn. Then the person said "what is LinkedIn and what do I do next"? The reality is the power of LinkedIn facilitating social network connections for a job search or closing business deals is a foreign thought to many people. For people who know about LinkedIn, getting started is still a daunting challenge. Using all of LinkedIn's powerful features does take some dedication in time, mixed with a little patience.

by Thomas E. Kenny

Although valuable communications with your professional network should be ongoing, a career transition (change of job) provides valuable opportunities for communication!

Communications going into transition.

Announce any unplanned job search via the status message of various online social networking sites such as: LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter. This is less intrusive and impersonal than broadcasting the same canned email to all your network contacts. If you have a warm trusted relationship with your social networking contacts, they will notice and respond to your change of status.

by Thomas E. Kenny.

REAP is a concept I learned thanks to Jason Alba's JibberJobber Career Management radio show.

Many people get into networking and think it's just a matter of collecting names and contact info for reference later on. Or if you are in a job search adding to the list of people you can nag or beg for a job.