Whom Should I Link With On LinkedIn?

Q: Whom Should I Link With On LinkedIn?

–Signed, I like you, I think. But I’m just not sure.

This question actually arrived as,

“Tell me why I would want to have you as a LinkedIn connection?”

–after, of course, some very kind words about 2 of my (non-LinkedIn) lectures that they had seen at The New York Public Library’s JOB SEARCH CENTRAL.

It’s always a value exchange. We give something, and we get something in return. But, who got the better deal? –that’s what we’re really thinking about.

We are all facing this same new privacy concerns as our world moves forward at a lightning speed, and none of us want to be the one that makes a misstep.

• What should I do? / What should I be concerned about?

• Should I even have a LinkedIn Profile, and what do I say to my boss!?

• Should I connect with only those that I would recommend and respect professionally?

• Can I connect with someone that I’ve interviewed with?

• How about someone that I don’t know at all?

• Should I put all of my resume on LinkedIn, or only part of it?

I get questions like these all the time, as many individuals are just discovering that LinkedIn can be very valuable to them right now, and for their future.

I’m guessing if you have question(s) like those above on LinkedIn, that you have not seen my lecture on LinkedIn, filmed at NYPL, which I’m pleased to be able to share with you to watch in your home, office, school or wherever you may be (it’s from The New York Public Library!)–and feel free to share this with your friends and those in your network:

Self-Recruiter®

Building Your Professional Network With LinkedIn

& How To Use It For Your Job Search

http://www.nypl.org/audiovideo/building-your-professional-network-linkedin-and-how-use-it-your-job-search

(Please COMMENT just below the video, as this is how the NYPL selects future projects –Your comment’s subject-line becomes its headline)

It’s my full lecture, and in it I explain why ‘everyone’ is a good connection on LinkedIn (from a CEO, to the person that may clean the CEO’s office –everyone is a valuable connection for us).

We have to separate the idea of Facebook from the idea of LinkedIn.

While Facebook, at least the idea of it, is about our extended ‘friends’ across a network, LinkedIn is about ‘building a network’ that you can leverage to your benefit professionally.

THINK: Career, Job Search, Interviews (and even in your own Business)

The real value of LinkedIn for you is not simply your profile, that’s just the ‘window dressing’, albeit very important and valuable window dressing.

The real value is the ‘network pool’ that you build by adding connections.

____________

Example:

If you have ’2 connections’, you have a ‘pool’ that you can search within to locate people.

Those could be:

– people inside companies that you would like to work for, or

– people that would be the decision-makers for a position that you may be interested in, or

– someone that you may be interviewing with next week (so that you could better prepare for the meeting).

So… you have yours in the pool (2) , but you also get all the connections that each of ‘your 2′ have. They go in the pool, too. But, there is more! You also get all of your connections’ connections’ connections in the pool.

It’s 3-levels of connections –an exponential gain.

____________

In my own network, as an example, at this moment, I have 1,036 direct-connections, but I have almost 11 million people in my ‘personal, searchable pool’.

My 1,036 +  3-levels of connections =  (almost) 11 Million

That means that I can ‘find’ (almost) any:

– hiring manager that I’m searching for; or

– a certain contact within a company that I may want to reach out to; or

– the person that I may meet with next week

They are (almost) all available to me as another part of my research, so that I can better prepare to win those meetings, interviews and appointments, etc.

That’s just the tip of the iceberg. While there are even more new techniques that I’ve added to my ‘live’ LinkedIn lectures and upcoming Online Series, since the NYPL brought in the film crew to capture the above presentation, I know this video lecture by NYPL will open your eyes to the value that you can build.

So, Let’s Get Networking!

John Crant

Author, Career Coach & Speaker

on Job Search and Career Management

© John Crant