Late last night I was e-mailing back and forth with a job seeker in San Francisco that heard the podcast interview and signed up on JibberJobber. He gets the value of JibberJobber as a tool for his current job search as well as others that he will inevitably have. In his words:
“I am employed but then again, based on everything I’ve heard and seen, that’s the best time to plan ahead and build career change resources.”
So that other tool â?? LinkedIn. It is growing on me (yep, I’m a slow adopter). I remember my first few weeks on LinkedIn – it was a social Siberia. I was lonely. I had no links. It was embarrassing to link to anyone because they’d only be one of … well, 2 connections 🙂
Now I have so many I can count them all on one hand! I honestly haven’t been soliciting LinkedIn connections, but I never turn a request down (yep, all 5 requests). So I don’t write this as an expert, rather an observer 😉 And yes, I believe that a social networking site like LinkedIn fits in nicely with JibberJobber.
If you don’t have an account with LinkedIn – no matter your status in a job search (even you guys that aren’t looking) here is what I recommend:
Get an account – its free and easy.
Find 10 to 15 people to try and hook up with – this way when someone wants to link to you they’ll see that you have more than, say, someone like me 🙂 Find people from your work, previous jobs, neighbors, other people in your network, coaches/counselors, friends, etc.
Regularly get a new link to someone – this can be a daily goal, a weekly goal, or a monthly goal. The point is, continue to build your online social network. The more links you create the more value you bring to people.
Reach out to a second degree person – every once in a while try and meet someone new through your network. Thatâ??s what it is for, isnâ??t it?
Import the LinkedIn contacts into JibberJobber – take advantage of the ranking as well as the logs that JibberJobber has – so you can really focus on ensuring that the relationships with those contacts increase (if you can measure it, you can improve it).
If you are a newbie at linked in, that is enough to get you started. Donâ??t worry about the super-users in LinkedIn â?? with thousands of connections. Develop your network with consistency and work on those relationships!
If you want to add me, and get me over the hump of only having 5 first degree connections, just search on “Jason Alba”! Iâ??d be happy to be one of your first connections.