linkedin recommendations

LinkedIn Part 8: Find a New Job

March 10, 2009 by Sean Nelson

If you were a fan of baseball during the Sammy Sosa / Mark McGuire homerun love fest, you remember watching both sluggers knock balls out of the park night after night. McGuire’s forearms were bigger than my legs. Have you seen a picture of Mr. McGuire lately? He looks normal. Today McGuire would likely be a slap hitter, dinging base hits just over the second baseman or shortstop.

That’s the difference between looking for a job using LinkedIn to see how you are connected into opportunities and just looking for a job.

LinkedIn Part 6: A Stage to Engage Your Audience

March 3, 2009 by Sean Nelson

In the business world you often don’t get to practice your performance. Impressions made, often can only be changed with a lot of time and extra work. The time to practice and prepare is before you encounter your audience.

On LinkedIn your audience includes existing and potential:

1. Connections
2. Alliance partners
3. Clients
4. Coworkers
5. Business Partners

LinkedIn Part 5: I Highly Recommend Recommendations

February 17, 2009 by Sean Nelson

If you’re a small business or a sales person you’re not selling a product or service, you’re selling yourself. For many, the thought of self-promotion just isn’t one that they are comfortable with. LinkedIn can help you with your discomfort.

Recommendations can serve as an effective alternative to selling yourself.

LinkedIn Part 2: Enhancing Your Networking

December 14, 2008 by Sean Nelson

The core of LinkedIn revolves around connecting to other business professionals, which is networking. Networking exclusively on LinkedIn, though, ignores the human element of face to face interaction. Understanding, once again that LinkedIn is a tool, how do you use it to enhance your other networking?

Guy’s Jobs Story

April 14, 2008 by Sean Nelson

This morning I received an email from Guy Havelick with a tale of two workers who were laid off. Here’s part of his email:

I work for a large corporation. They too often play the musical chairs game with far too few chairs. Recently two good friends, excellent contributors and employees, were caught when the music stopped. One had a great network and found another job immediately. The second was not properly networked and is still struggling to start his own business.

As a good employee, as secure as I can be working for a big company, how can I provide myself a safety net? (One that I would prefer not to be forced to use.) LinkedIn seems like the best social networking tool out there. How can I use LinkedIn to be that safety net? What’s the best way to sell my reputation when I’m not yet in a position to be bought?