I left Salesforce at the end of June 2015. I started at Leadspace at the end of August. I interviewed “without stopping to count” eight companies. I only actually applied for one of those jobs. The other seven opportunities “and the one that turned into this job” came because of a blog post “Pulse post, whatever — not just a status update” that I made on LinkedIn titled, “I’m ready for my next challenge. And by ‘challenge,’ I mean ‘job.‘”
Dozens of people reached out to me with ideas, thoughts, words of encouragement and contacts. Around a dozen people reached out to me and said, “You should come work with us.” Those weren’t all job offers; some were people I’d worked with before introducing me to colleagues or CMO. Of those interactions, seven turned into interviews, and one turned into the job I have now, as senior director of inbound marketing at Leadspace. And it’s great.
What I did “mostly” that worked:
- Be there. I’m by no means the first person to say this, but build your networks before you need them. Connect with current and former colleagues. Connect with your friends. Do it. Do it now.
- Be helpful. Don’t think of LinkedIn just as a job search tool. Think of it as a place you can help people and share interesting information. Because, just as in all social media, when you need something from your network, they will think positively of you.
- Be generous. Write recommendations for others: former colleagues, former bosses, former direct reports. Many of them will return the favor, and that looks good to a future employer.
- Be consistent. Think of LinkedIn as your persistent, realtime résumé. The days of updating a paper CV the night before an interview are over. Update your LinkedIn profile whenever something significant happens in your career.
- Be persuasive. Lots of professionals, myself included, dashed off their original LinkedIn summaries and listed bullet points for their job responsibilities, if that. Write a compelling summary that tells people who you are and why you do what you do, and make them want to work with you.
- Be specific. Did you create a new demand generation process in your company, or did you create a new demand generation process that increased qualified leads by 28% over the previous year?
Even if you spend all your social time on Facebook and think of LinkedIn as its boring business cousin, start devoting some of the time you spend liking cat videos on your LinkedIn profile. It may well be where your next job comes from.