Simiya

Here is a short list of what I have found that works:

LinkedIn Strategies

• Make sure your LinkedIn profile is completely filled in. Make it look like an expanded resume so that people can get a good feel for what you have done. There is a limit on the length of the description of each job you have had, so to get around the limitation include any internal promotions you may have had as separate jobs and use this to add further information. Recruiters and hiring managers use this information to initially screen candidates. Always make sure your personal email address(es)  are registered in your account settings.

• Connect with as many legitimate contacts as you can while you still have a job. Invite anyone from whom you receive a business card, but not before you send them a thank you note for participating at whatever event that inspired them to share their contact information. LinkedIn also has a software plugin for Microsoft Office that allows you to painlessly invite anyone from whom you have received an email. Use this feature to reconnect with old contacts. Similar functionality is available to invite members of your Yahoo!, MSN and Gmail email address books.

• At the bottom of the connections page there is a link that allows you to export you contact list to a CSV file, which you can be opened with a spreadsheet and then be resaved in your favorite format. The file has all your contacts arranged in rows under various headings for the columns such as first name, last name, company title etc. Feel free to add additional columns such as notes, date last contacted, position applied for, phone number, how you were introduced, and status. If you have just been laid off send emails out to everyone on your list. You will be surprised how supportive people will be. If you are really nifty with excel, you can create a column with an email link that you can click on and it will create a partially complete email with a subject and salutation. Here is an example:

=HYPERLINK(P100,"Send Email")
=CONCATENATE("mailto:",D100,"?subject=Hello There&body=Hello ",B100,"%0A%0A",E100,"%0A%0ARegards%0A%0AJohn Doe")

• Where P100 is the cell with the email link in the CONCATENATE link below and “Send Email” is the text of the link. D100 is the cell with the email address, B100 is the cell with your message, E100 is the cell with the email message. The %0A are new line characters. You can replace the “Hello There” with a cell value with your subject, read up on the CONCATENATE function and experiment. You will get a $VALUE error if your message is longer than 256 characters.

• Make the spreadsheet the central part of your job search tracking. Add all new contacts you make outside of LinkedIn to it.

• Send out email updates monthly to everyone as it will help remind people to keep you in their thoughts. Send thank you notes to all those persons that reply. Ask a few of those who reply to go out for lunch or coffee. Coffee has the advantage of being done before work starts and is less likely to be canceled and can be less intimidating. Meet with people on your list regularly during your search and even afterward as you can use the initial discussions to create a deeper professional relationship in future.

• Search on job boards and sites like www.simplyhired.com and www.indeed.com which aggregate job listings from many sources. Apply to jobs and then use LinkedIn to find people in the companies to which you have applied. Use these contacts or referrals to give you a recommendation to the hiring manager.

• Use your LinkedIn profile to link to your personal website or blog. Make your personal website become a portfolio of what you do with links to things you do with which you feel comfortable sharing on the web. Take a look at my www.simiya.com/resume portfolio site for an example. If you run a blog, use one of the LinkedIn plugins to create a listing of your most recent posts right on your profile page. If you don’t have a blog create one and write short postings on topics related to your profession, at least for the duration of your job search, and link it to your profile.

Other Strategies

• Start interviewing as quickly as possible. Use the first face to face encounters to understand what employers are looking for outside of what is stated on your resume. The practice will be invaluable in preparation for the job you really want to get. It’s always better to be stumped or nervous for the jobs you don’t really want. Analyze what went well and badly. Determine how you could have answered questions better.

• My last advice is to update your online resume weekly as recruiters tend to only contact people who have recent modifications. Remember a change can be as simple as adding a semi-colon this week and removing it the next.