Target your networking efforts

- [Instructor] With over 700 million users on LinkedIn worldwide, it's one of the best tools or databases for finding key decision-makers. Let's take Josie, our avatar example. She created a target list of companies. On her target list of companies includes Blue Sky Kites, Hansel and Pedal, and Microsoft. Microsoft would be a great example to walk through how to really build out a robust target company list. For every company on your target company list, you want to go on LinkedIn and assess if you know someone in your own network that works for the company. You also want to take that a step further and use all filters to figure out who your potential boss would be if you got the job that you want. Your goal in doing this is to try to get referred to the person who would potentially be your boss through your network, through someone that you know, so I'm going to walk you through Josie, so on LinkedIn we're going to go tot the search bar at the top and type in Microsoft 'cause that's one of the target companies on her list. Once we get to the Microsoft company homepage on LinkedIn, we're then going to click on see all employees on LinkedIn, and this is going to pull up all the employees that work for that particular company that have active profiles on LinkedIn. From here, we can whittle this list down to try to figure out who Josie's potential boss would be if she worked for Microsoft. Since Josie's particularly interested in working in the San Francisco Bay area, one of the first things that we're going to do is narrow it down by location, and since she's interested in recruitment roles, we're going to do title recruiter and we got 19 results of recruiters in the San Francisco Bay area. Josie's goal is to try to get a conversation with someone who is a decision-maker, who could potentially hire her if there were an opportunity. Josie's going to look through the list and try to determine if she has any connections or people on this list that she knows. Because Microsoft is such a large company, Josie should also consider looking at the home office, which as we know Microsoft is based in Seattle. We're going to go back to the keyword list and because we're looking for someone who's potentially a decision-maker, we're going to type in keyword title director talent and this is going to pull a list of 35 results. Now here's something I want you to remember. At a company the size of Microsoft, the left foot doesn't always talk to the right foot, so just because you pick one person to have a conversation with or email, it doesn't mean that you can't have a conversation with someone else at the same company. Because we know that statistically, the odds of someone responding to a cold email is only 20 to 25%, the more targeted and personal you are in your messages and the more people that you reach out to, the more likely that you're going to get a great response. Now, as you're assessing the individual list, you want to look for someone that you have a connection to and that can be a personal connection through a friend or former acquaintance or that can be a university connection. You can do this by also searching for a university connection. If you and the person went to the same school, or maybe you were even in the same college clubs or sorority or fraternity, you can use all filters to search by school name. In this case our avatar attended the University of Washington, which brings up a list of results. Josie has no connections or ties at all to this individual. She doesn't have any friends that work for Microsoft and she doesn't know anyone who knows her personally. A smart move for Josie to make would be to start following her content on LinkedIn. Following someone's content is a great way to subtly get on their radar and build a relationship with them online before reaching out first. In this case, this person is pretty active on LinkedIn and I can tell from looking at their activity. In fact daily, they're commenting or posting things on LinkedIn. Josie can demonstrate her knowledge of the industry by adding value to this individual's content. When this person makes a post on LinkedIn, Josie can share her expertise in the comment section. This puts her on the individual's radar. Josie can also send a connection request to this individual and identify who she is and that she has been reading the content that she's sharing on LinkedIn and mention something that she likes about the content, something that she's learned from engaging with her. I would encourage you to not overlook employee referrals. In fact, some research shows that referrals are five times more likely to be hired than the job seeker who didn't get the referral, and you can use LinkedIn to find people that you know that work for the company or even friends of friends who work for the company. I think it's important to be selective about who you reach out to and the types of messages that you send. That being said, don't hesitate to reach out to more than one person at an individual company, 'cause remember, it only takes one person, one conversation to change the trajectory of your job search.