LinkedIn as Your Personal Recruiter

By Job Interview Board

It always happens, well, most times. You get few to many notifications from LinkedIn from a recruiter or HR for a cool job, unfortunately, you are not looking to switch now, so you ignore these invitations. Then there may come a situation when you want to make the move and you don’t know where to go or who to reach out to.

That is where LinkedIn comes to your rescue. To say that LinkedIn is much better resource than a job site is no exaggeration.

Here are ways you can make use of the power of this powerful resource to turn it into you personal recruiter:

1) Always respond to the interesting/relevant job offers:

Even when you are not looking, send back a courtesy note thanking the person for reaching out to you. You never know by the time you are looking to make a move - that person may be in a position that can make an impact on your future moves.

2) Keep a running log of LinkedIn contacts:

Keep a note of all the relevant and/or intriguing jobs and LinkedIn members in a running email draft, google documents or keep sending a running email every time you add a name to your list. Do NOT save the list on a computer/external hard drive; Murphy’s law seems to catch up with computers and external hard drives more often than with emails.

3) Keep your LinkedIn updated: 

Read your LinkedIn profile at least once a year (more is better) and update to include most up-to-date experiences. Caution must be taken to not reveal any sensitive information about your current tasks as it could jeopardise your current job. Always leave out the company/client/contact information in terms of your ‘current’ job.

4) Make those who contact you aware of what you are looking for:

You never know who is friends’ with who and you never know what other positions are currently open or may be open in very near future. Keeping these possibilities in mind, when you go back rejecting a job ad on LinkedIn - show your gratitude for their time and tell them in clear terms what you are looking for. Consider below example:

Dear Alassandra,

Thank you for reaching out to me about the Job Role at ABC Inc. I appreciate you taking time in going through my LinkedIn profile and considering my candidature.

Although I am not actively pursuing any job opportunities at this moment, I will not turn down something that may be of great interest to me. Speaking of interest, if I were to make a switch it would be to gain experience in the industry in a role where I am able to make use of my experience in managing globally mobile employee program. Having worked in service firms for seven years has provided me with great insight on how the Global Mobility program works across the small, medium and large multi national companies.

My talent will be best utilized in the industry rather than at a service firm.

I understand that our goals are not aligned at this point in time and I wanted to let you know of what I am interested in with the hope that you will think of me when such an opportunity presents itself.

Thank you again for your time and have a great day.

Best regards,

Aadi Reddy

5) Relationship and relationship:

Once you narrow down on the recruiter(s) who deals primarily in the area of your interest (current or aspiring), make sure you develop a good two way communication. One of the recruiters that I have been in touch for years (even though I have not taken any interviews through him) ended up starting his own agency which earned a good name in the market and guess who is on his ‘top list for premium jobs’?  The point is that if you have worked on point# 4, recruiters will contact you when they find a job that fits your description and if they have good relationship with the company they are recruiting for - they will even put in a good word for you.

It used to be a challenge to find and keep in touch with good recruiters and company HR contacts but with the advent of LinkedIn that hurdle mostly is non-existent.  If you make use of LinkedIn well it can serve you as your personal recruiter.

Written by Aadi Reddy, career expert from Job Interview Board. Follow us on Twitter @JobIntervwBoard for career tips.

 

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