Business owners, corporate recruiters and corporate executives around the globe are harnessing the power of LinkedIn to grow their businesses. I read an article a few days ago that referred to LinkedIn as a Rolodex of 400 million people. No kidding!
The benefit of LinkedIn is that it can serve multiple purposes and reach multiple audiences—depending on your goals.
If you are recruiting for clients, employees or board members, don’t underestimate the power of this tool. There are various subscription levels and for approximately $300US per year, you will have access to more advanced search features using the Business subscription. There are several subscription levels available depending on your needs.
Searching your network
You must be “in network” directly or indirectly in order to reach your targeted individuals. A network of 500 direct connections can be a good start, although the larger your network, the larger your candidate pool (employer pool or client pool respectively).
Suppose you are a CEO looking for a Vice President of Finance, you may use the search string “VP Finance” or “Vice President Finance” in the “Title” field. The paid versions enable you to search on the current or past position (in addition to many other useful search fields).
Perhaps as the CEO, you would consider a “Financial Controller” who is looking for a step up and you could use those terms to find potential passive candidates.
Alternatively you may want a VP Finance with enterprise resource planning (ERP) experience. In this case, you would input “VP Finance” into the Title field and “enterprise resource planning” or “ERP” into the Keyword field.
This is what I uncovered: I have 4.6M direct and indirect connections and I when I conducted the search, here are my results:
“Enterprise Resource System” + “VP Finance” = 3 people in Tampa, St. Louis and Milwaukee. Of course your results will differ from mine because we have our own unique networks.
When I used the abbreviation “ERP” + “VP Finance” = 5,690 people
Use the quotations around your search terms to produce a tight result.
Executive Job Seekers
If you are an executive job seeker, ensure that your profile is optimized with these words in both forms “enterprise resource system” and “ERP”. Otherwise you will be overlooked by CEOs and recruiters looking for candidates like you. You will want to have both forms of this financial term in your profile so that you are found when the searcher only uses the one version of ERP.
The same applies for business owners who are targeting specific clients, businesses and titles. The tool is simply a powerhouse!
- Business development
- Recruiting for executives
- Keeping relevant in the marketplace
Keeping relevant outside your company
LinkedIn has transformed the way that corporate recruiters mine for talent. CEOs, hiring decision-makers and recruiters are mining LinkedIn for their next CXO or outside director.
It is as important to remain relevant in the marketplace as it is to be relevant inside your organization. Your network is your net worth and keeping top of mind in your targeted marketplace is possible through LinkedIn’s publishing feature.
LinkedIn can easily complement your industry speaking engagements and conference keynotes. You can repurpose your presentations into slide decks on LinkedIn and publish for free!
Examples of easily re-purposed samples of your work include:
- Whitepapers.
- Case studies.
- Articles published elsewhere.
- AGM speeches.
- Keynote speeches.
- Media clips.
The return on time invested for LinkedIn is highly attractive. There is no cost to using LinkedIn’s basic subscription which gives you access to powerful features.
I don’t have time
My clients will exclaim that they don’t have time for LinkedIn. But think about the ROI of 20 minutes per day. I’ve had clients who were found by parties unknown to them and landed outstanding job opportunities.
Bonus Tip
Do you read the newspaper each day? Take a few minutes each morning when you read the paper to engage on LinkedIn. For a copy of my comprehensive LinkedIn Profile Guide, contact us.
