Hello, again! I want to share another way you can use LinkedIn in your targeted job search.

With roles posted on LinkedIn drawing hundreds of applications, how can you be one of the 5-10 people selected to interview?

Of course (ahem), you must have a solid resume and a well-written cover letter. And, your LinkedIn profile should be current and keyworded.

But here’s a way to greatly improve your odds and position yourself for selection: Build a relationship with the hiring manager.

How, you ask? Well, most hiring managers want the best candidate for their role, so they actively promote the open position on LinkedIn, on their personal LinkedIn profile.

You can easily search to find these posts:

• Search for: [Job title] hiring
• Click on “Posts”
• Click on “All filters”
• Find “Author company” and type the company name
• Click “Show results”

Now, look for a post that is advertising the role. If the person posting the job says something like, “I’m hiring” or “Join us!”, and their job title looks like a more senior role in the same function, you’ve found the right person.

But how do you establish rapport?

LinkedIn allows you to message your 1st-degree connections (and, within group pages, fellow group members) for free. If you aren’t connected, you always have the option to send an InMail to another LinkedIn member. These are a perk of LinkedIn Premium Career – it’s well worth the monthly fee for this feature. So, you have your messaging all set.

Now, what do you say?

Well, you could write, I applied for the job, please consider me for an interview. But that’s boring, it isn't engaging, and probably, the hiring manager gets plenty of these. Remember, you want to stand apart from your competition.

Instead, try these approaches:

1) In your message, explain you've applied for the job, and want to share some thoughts about what you’d do if you were to get it.

For example: Say it’s a Product Manager role. You share some observations about their product, their competitors’ products, and your recommendations for approaching the role.

2) Respond to a specific requirement from the job listing.

Let’s say it’s a role in talent acquisition. You write, I’ve done recruiting in your company’s industry, and here are some ways I approached building a pipeline of candidates, or improved the quality of candidates, or reduced time to hire - whatever seems to be the most important requirement that you can confidently address.

In other words, you want to demonstrate that you can already do this job, and/or, you’ve given thought to how you would approach this job.

Close your message by offering to share more observations and chat about the role they are advertising, and suggest catching up in the next few days. Feel free to include your phone number!

NB: Some hiring managers will have been coached by their HR group that it’s important to maintain objectivity, so they won’t want to engage here. And that's OK, because at the very least, you’ve put yourself in front of them, and they’ll be looking for your name when selecting who gets an interview.

In other words, it certainly can't hurt.

Give it a try, and report back to let me know if it worked!

If you have more questions about using LinkedIn in your job search, feel free to reply to this message and ask away. Please forward this to a friend who's job seeking!

Thanks for reading,

meg