Tag Archives: Networking

Dear College Students, here are 3 steps to take when connecting with your alumni on LinkedIn

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This is a follow-up of a post called Dear College Students, please the following 10 LinkedIn tips.

college student2Dear College Students,

Now that your profile is in tip top shape, it’s time to think about how, as a new college student, to connect with other LinkedIn members. It’s time to develop your online network.

To help you do this, LinkedIn has a neat feature called Find Alumni, which is located in the Connections drop-down menu. 

Why is it important that you’ve created a profile and must now develop your network? Because the sooner you start your network, the more useful it will be when you graduate and have to look for a job. An old adage is: in the working world, the best time to network is when you’re working. So it stands to reason the best time to network is while you’re in school.

Finding alumni with whom to connect

Assuming you haven’t made any connections with your alumni, which also include those who attended your alma mater before you arrived, you’ll want to connect with them because they’re probably currently working and may know of opportunities or, at least, people with whom you can connect.

First go to How You’re Connected to the far right of the second screen. Most likely you have very few, if any, 1st degree connections. That’s alright. Focus on your second degrees. Select your 2nd degrees by clicking on that bar. You’ll see the other categories shift, the numbers decrease. This narrows your search for potential alumni contacts.

If you’re a communications major, you’ll focus on people who are connected with you under What They Do, e.g., Media and Communication. Look at where they work, what they studied, what they’re skilled at. This will give you a sense of your commonalities, as well as some talking points when you connect with them.

Connecting with your alumni

The largest advantage you have is your common bond with people who are going to school with you or who have attended years before. When you attempt to connect with them through their profile, the option Classmate has already been chosen for you.

This is where, as an aspiring LinkedIn professional, you need to carefully craft your invite messages. Under no circumstances will you send the default LinkedIn invite; that’s plain laziness. Instead, you’ll write a personalized note, which will show the professionalism LinkedIn members expect from each other.

Note: Even though you can hit Connect under the person’s photo, it’s still best to open their profile and choose to connect after reading it thoroughly.

Here’s what you might write after reading your potential connection’s profile:

Dear Mr. Schmidt,

As you’re an alumnus at the University of Virginia and are in the field of Marketing Communications, I’d like to take this time to reach out and invite you to my network. I will contact you to see if we can be of assistance to each other.

Completing the process

Your new invite accepts your personalized invitation because both of you share an interest in Communications and, most importantly are alumni. In your invitation you mentioned being of assistance to Mr. Schmidt. Where many people fall down in the process is not following through.

Be true to your word by contacting him via e-mail when he accepts your invite. Also write down some questions you’d like to ask Mr. Schmidt regarding the line of work he does. Make them intelligent questions; don’t waste his time. Ask him if he might know of anyone who you could also speak with. Finally, tell him you’re at his disposal should he need assistance.

The process of building relationships can be  a long one, but because you’ve just begun your education, you have plenty of time developing long-lasting relationships. These are connections that can be of great help to you once you’ve graduated college.

Don’t overlook the value of One-Stop career center job search workshops

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The other day I was talking with a neighbor who has been out of work for over six months. He’s a project manager who worked at a medical equipment conglomerate for five years. I asked him how his job search was going. He told me great; he had sent out more than 10 resumes that day on a number of job boards. I cringed—in to the black hole they went.

Find a job

I encouraged him to come down to the One-Stop career center, for which I work, for help with his job search. “The Unemployment Office?” he asked. Obviously he hadn’t been to a career center, where unemployment insurance assistance is one of many services the career centers offer.

“No the career center. We can help you with your job search. We have workshops on all kinds of job-search topics….” I also wanted to tell him that he’d feel very comfortable at our career center. He’d fit in.

Adapting to a Rapidly Growing Professional Job Seeker Clientele

One common misconception of One-Stop career centers is that the only people who attend job search workshops are those who know little to nothing about seeking employment or are non-exempt workers. For a vast majority of people, nothing could be further from the truth.

Increasingly more job seekers who attend workshops are savvy job seekers who come from all types of occupations. Positions like marketing, engineering, sales, pharmaceutical development, document control, manufacturing management, as well as mechanics, construction workers, et cetera.

To better serve the more experienced job seekers, career centers have had to upgrade many of its services. Workshop Specialists (WS) are finding the challenge of serving experienced job seekers to be both exhilarating and mentally stimulating.

They’ve had to up their game and are meeting the challenge. The consequence of not enhancing their knowledge is letting savvy job seekers down and driving them away. Below are some of the more popular workshops that WS’s have developed.

LinkedIn: To answer the demand of the LinkedIn aficionados, many career centers are offering workshops on Intro to LinkedIn and Advanced LinkedIn. The latter workshop addresses the elements that make a LinkedIn profile appealing to employers who are enabling the Hidden Job Market by searching for passive or active job seekers via LinkedIn. Employers are increasingly foregoing the traditional search process and instead using LinkedIn and social media like Facebook and Twitter. Approximately 80% of employers are using LinkedIn.

Advanced Résumé Writing: This is another area of the job search where advanced job seekers expect more than the rudimentary theories on writing this important marketing piece. Many of them have received costly assistance from outplacement agencies and professional résumé writers, so they know the drill when it comes to writing an effective marketing piece. Advanced Résumé Writing workshop focus more on Strategy, Positioning, and Selling one’s skills and experience. Workshop Specialists stress results that are quantified and related to the jobs to which jobseekers apply.

The Interview Process: Advanced jobseekers need to know more about the interview process than simply the etiquette one has to demonstrate at an interview, e.g. steady eye contact, a firm handshake, and good body posture. The importance of researching the job and company comes to no surprise to them, but combining the power of LinkedIn and reading the company’s website for additional details of the job is some food for thought. (The more experienced job seekers have an advantage over the ones who haven’t looked for work in more than ten years.) Behavioral questions and how to prepare for them is often new even to advanced job seekers. Many of them haven’t experienced behavioral questions, and if they have they were often taken off guard.

Networking: There is a clear divide between the experienced and inexperienced job seekers in a career networking workshop. The advanced job seekers have been attending networking groups once or perhaps twice a week, so they’re familiar with organized networking technique. The focus on how networking enables one to penetrate the Hidden Job Market. It’s fascinating to see workshop attendeess’ faces when WS’s talk about today’s hiring process—that 80% of employers are hiring from within, not advertising the very best positions and entertaining only the savviest networkers.

Job Search Letters: Experienced job seekers know the importance of effective written communications, but in this workshop they’re reminded of how important it is to be proactive in one’s job search. WS’s talk about approach letters as a way to network. Cover letters are always sent with a résumé unless instructed otherwise. When asked how many send cover letters with résumés, most don’t raise their hand. Jobseekers are encouraged to go beyond the typical cover letter with the typical first sentence, and write a vivid tagline that grabs employers’ attention. Boring doesn’t win brownie points with employers—it’s simply boring. The thank you letter is the conclusion of the interview process.

The next time you see someone who is biding his time applying online for jobs, suggest that he visit a One-Stop career center; talk to a career counselor; look into training; and, of course, join as many workshops as possible. Jobseekers of all experience levels shouldn’t turn their nose up to One-Stop career centers that are making a great effort to accommodate the expanding number of experienced job seekers…and often succeeding.