Using Linkedin efficiently

Amp34

Amp34

Amp34

Caporegime
Joined
25 Jul 2005
Posts
28,851
Location
Canada
I moved countries at the end of last year, during the biggest downturn in my industry in 20-50 years... Good timing!

Anyway there are essentially no relevant jobs here at the moment. I've uploaded my CV to various industry recruiting websites and availed myself with the agencies. Now all I can think of now is leveraging contacts of contacts on Linkedin.

Specifically it will be contacts of just a couple of people I have worked with that are from here. What is the etiquette for doing this? I get the feeling that just linkedin messaging "Hi, look at my profile, got any jobs?!" is probably not the right way to go about it, especially when I've never met any of these people... That said, using the introduction feature probably isn't great considering they are contacts of just a couple people, there's also the small matter of the need for a short message.

Any pointers from people that have done this before would be helpful (even if it "don't do this"...):)

EDIT: The people I'm thinking of contacting would be CEOs and Directors of small companies, rather than lower level employees.
 
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Why not contact your mutual connections with these CEO's, directors and ask them to introduce you?

Linkedin provides a button for this when you look at their profile, though I've not personally used it.

Also have you tried meetup.com? You don't mention your industry and maybe it is something that is more prevalent for tech and finance people but if I were to find myself having to move to another county like Canada or the US for some reason I think that would be my first port of call, there are a whole load of events for say startup founders to meet venture capitalists and potential early employees/co-founders to ones aimed at fintech or data science or specific programming languages...

Lastly if you're trying to contact directors/CEOs of small companies then the local chambers of commerce will presumably have a bunch of them.
 
I'm not too keen on just providing the guy with a list of names for his contacts so he can "introduce" me. He has already been pretty helpful with connections. I did have a meeting through one of his connections already (but was told they weren't actually hiring when I got through the door and spoke to the managers... Disconnect between CEO and lower management apparently!). I think the biggest issue I have is how to differentiate myself from the other hundred people calling them, all asking for jobs, especially as I'm not really that great of a networker/social bee.

Unfortunately meetup.com doesn't really have anything for my industry (Oil and Gas), I've been looking on there, for both job related and social things. Oddly the societies I am a member of don't appear to be as active for social things this side of the Atlantic (usually have "young persons" events/socials every so often, but none here so far). I'm not too keen on forking out hundreds of dollars to go to the other industry events at the moment (conferences and exhibitions), although am trying to get to the few free ones - not that that's helped so far.

My current feeling is to look into other jobs that utilise some of my skills, but I'm drawing a blank on what they could be at the moment! I think i'd rather work in something like landscaping than sat in an office doing something unrelated to my core skills at the moment, but that's a different matter! Currently not in too much of a hurry to get a job, but I've been saying that for 6 months now, and the other work I have been doing is drawing to a close. I think myself, like a significant portion of the industry are hoping OPEC will get their act together or the middle east implodes...:p
 
ah so you've only got one single connection in common with all these different these people, I guess that does change things in that yes you probably don't want to pester him to introduce you to a whole list of people... amybe one or two would be OK though

if meetup isn't an option it could be worth checking out the (industry relevant) linkedin groups these directors/CEOs are members of too
 
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