Great post! Have already forwarded it to one of our sales guys.
One thing I would like to add from personal experience: It's really easy these days to connect to a lot of people on LinkedIn that you have never met or even heard of before. I am tempted to say the acceptance quote of a "cold connection" is about 50%.
Once your network has a decent size, you can connect to almost anyone from your industry (in our case gaming and mobile) even if you only have a free LinkedIn account (like I do) because you have a least a couple of people from their company already within your 2nd/3rd degree connections, and then you can literally add the entire board. Believe me, more C-level guys than you might think will accept you if your profile looks like you are a decent person.
The reason I writing all this is that I have been much more successful getting meetings through LinkedIn than through cold email. I feel that if I send a LinkedIn message to somebody I am connected to (but that I do not know whatsoever), that person is much more likely to a) open the message in the first place because the sender is not anonymous but rather has a name, face, and a job, and therefore b) also much more likely to read/digest what I am actually writing. And from here it is only really about what you have to say and sell anyways....
The bottom line is that while LinkedIn is a tool intended for connecting people that know each other, it actually works best for connecting (and selling something) to people you do not know at all.
How often do people actually get cold-introduced from someone they simply "connected" with on LinkedIn to someone else? What incentive would they have?
I think the best way to start may be to ignore LinkedIn. I agree with everything you say about LinkedIn. It's the playground for sales reps, recruiters and HR people. And in that it does play a valuable role. Yet buried way back in time was this idea that you might connect to someone new through an existing mutual connection. There was trust based on that connection that made it a "warm" introduction. That concept is all but lost today.
I think you convince people to join specifically because they believe the only folks contacting them via this service will be trusted, warm and valuable. They won't get a lot of unsolicited requests from people who don't offer a mutually valuable relationship.
Consider reaching cold on LinkedIn with no "sales" agenda and explain your interest in reaching out. Pretty sure most people worth adding to your circle would appreciate actually not getting a sales pitch on LinkedIn through a connection request.
I find connection requests that are of a non-sales variety are so rare on that platform these days, it really sticks out when I get one.
Yes, exactly caw - thanks. I view LinkedIn as one huge convention center, and the worst that can happen is people decline you connection request. If you present an honest and positive tone, people will be more receptive. Then it is possible to PM select connections to review your idea or beta, etc.
1. Request for introductions. If there's anyone I want to get connected with, first place I go to is LinkedIn and see if he is friends with any of my friends. If a friend of mine knows him, I will ask my friend to send a personal intro.
2. Look for outside experts. Yesterday I was looking to connect with some iPhone game devs. I posted a discussion on 2 LinkedIn groups (GameDevs, and Social Game Devs), and I have received over 10 messages already.
It's a really powerful tool to create professional relationships.
Recently, I've started receiving many invitations to connect with people on LinkedIn. As a matter of habit, I don't accept those requests.
However, I've seen people in Sales, Recruitment etc. usually connect with such people on LinkedIn.
What are the positives and negatives of such connections?
I am at a bit over 15 years of experience and have generally had a steady influx of recruiters and internal HR reaching out through LinkedIn. When I briefly listed myself as Open to Work (for recruiter view) last month the flood gates really opened. I ended up signing with one of the companies that reached out to me recently.
If you are getting nothing through LinkedIn, I wonder if it's something in how your past experience is reflected?
However, this is actually the first time a LinkedIn "cold" outreach resulted in me signing. I have not job hopped that much, but in the past it's been either ex-coworkers recommending a company reach out or me reaching out to an ex-coworker and learning that they have some relevant positions open at his new place. As others have said, your existing network may get you higher quality and more targeted leads overall.
"Once your profile is in decent shape, you can start connecting with strangers. Unfortunately, LinkedIn limits users to only 30,000 connections, and 3,000 connection requests, so use some discretion." l o l
Is it weird I was thinking of making a mastering linkedIn course yesterday? I think people would be interested.
I have rigorously only accepted connections from people I’ve actually worked with in some capacity.
Makes for a nicer feed, but maybe that means I’m missing out on some recruiting opportunities? I thought recruiters could reach out to folks on LinkedIn without establishing a connection first.
Yes, that's the value of LinkedIn. Turning Cold prospects into warm ones. Its wroks very nicely in enterprise situations. When you know who your target entry point is (meaning, the person you are leveraging to sneek in your pitch) things go much smoother. Its just a matter of finding out more about them and easily creating a profile around their likes. You can't really fail at rapport if you know what the person likes. And rapport is how you open sales negotiations.
LinkedIn cold messages get a lot of (well deserved) flak but they can be very useful for moving to the next step in your career if you're willing to sort through the cruft. Of those ~dozen messages with competitive TC, I'm sure half probably had projects you wouldn't be interested in or were with companies/industries you didn't want to associate with. Some percentage of the remainder would choose not to move forward on their end for one reason or another. So out of 400+ messages you're likely down to 2-3 offers at the end of the process, and likely at different points in time.
Especially as the hiring markets starts (continues?) to contract at the middle and lower ends, being willing to give these types of outreach a chance is going to become a differentiator.
I've used LinkedIn Questions before and was impressed with the numbers of answers I received. So in that sense, the OP has a point--even if it's not elaborated on heavily.
Yesterday I received a message from a local businessman who sent me a list of local networking events. I don't know this guy but I looked at his profile and I was impressed by his technique for getting a foot in the door with me. Seeing that really got me thinking about other ways one could use LinkedIn to create rapport with other folks in their field.
I've gotten one or two leads through Linkedin, though from contacts who knew me fairly well (well enough to vouch for my skills), and who had my email address as well. So the fact they used LinkedIn to make the connection was just for convenience.
That said, what I like about Linkedin is it widens your "social surface area" - my referrals have come from unexpected places (a university professor, a classmate, a guy I met at a hackathon, etc), and Linkedin is a good service for maintaining those type of contacts.
I'm not so good at maintaing contact with old connections (any tips? I read Never Eat Alone but as an introvert, I find it hard to get motivated to put it into practice). I think one thing the platform we're building should do, though, is encourage and support freelance devs to build their professional networks.
My LinkedIn account has ~250 connections, all of which I either worked with or at least have been at the same company at the same time. I'd still struggle to recognize many of them but I think that's mostly due to working with most of them remotely.
My approach: do not accept random people without an introductory message, including recruiters, keep my profile visible only 2 levels deep, and clean up recruiters which I ended up not doing anything with.
Result: only a few dozen or so messages every month, most of them relevant, even if I am not interested (probably only a third with unrelated stuff).
I don't mean this snarkily: I'm more surprised there is evidence people's job searches were positively affected by connecting on LinkedIn. From what I've seen it has a lot of "feel good" stuff, but it not really a place for networking to get a job, unless it's through cold-messaging from recruiters.
One thing I would like to add from personal experience: It's really easy these days to connect to a lot of people on LinkedIn that you have never met or even heard of before. I am tempted to say the acceptance quote of a "cold connection" is about 50%.
Once your network has a decent size, you can connect to almost anyone from your industry (in our case gaming and mobile) even if you only have a free LinkedIn account (like I do) because you have a least a couple of people from their company already within your 2nd/3rd degree connections, and then you can literally add the entire board. Believe me, more C-level guys than you might think will accept you if your profile looks like you are a decent person.
The reason I writing all this is that I have been much more successful getting meetings through LinkedIn than through cold email. I feel that if I send a LinkedIn message to somebody I am connected to (but that I do not know whatsoever), that person is much more likely to a) open the message in the first place because the sender is not anonymous but rather has a name, face, and a job, and therefore b) also much more likely to read/digest what I am actually writing. And from here it is only really about what you have to say and sell anyways....
The bottom line is that while LinkedIn is a tool intended for connecting people that know each other, it actually works best for connecting (and selling something) to people you do not know at all.
Give it a shot!
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