Stalk, Engage, Talk
You're on LinkedIn, right?
But are you maxing out the opportunities being on the world's largest professional networking site can give you?
Here's how to increase your chances of finding an interesting new role by shifting out of lurker mode and moving through stalker to talker.
Most people aren't using LinkedIn to its fullest.
It's a free tool where you can meet and interact with anyone in the world that you'd like to get to know professionally.
But the majority of people play small on the platform and sit quietly in the shadows in lurker mode. Now there's nothing wrong at all with being a lurker. I was one myself up until early 2022 and some of my best clients have come through LinkedIn without ever having engaged with me on the platform itself.
But if you want to step up into activist mode and really take the wheel in deciding where your career goes next you'll need a new strategy.
I call it SET
Stalk - Engage - Talk
Let's break it down.
Stalk
Stalking is where you use LI as a research tool to answer questions like:
• Who has achieved what I want to achieve?
• Who is in my warm network that I don't know yet?
• Who is working in organisations that I want to work for?
You can find answers to all these questions by starting with your alumni tool.
Type in the name of your university in the LI search bar and yours should be in the list of results.
Then go to the university page and hit the 'alumni' tab.
This gives you access to everyone who's got the name of your university in their profile and breaks them down into sector, job, geography.
It's a truly deep ole rabbit hole to go down!
Tapping into this tool can help you answer some of the questions about who is where and, more importantly, this sector of the LI population ,i.e. those who have a study institution in common with you can help in the later part of the strategy.
You can also use a straight up search to find people who:
• Worked in the same previous workplaces as you
• Are in the same kind of job role as you
• Have a job role in a sector/organisation that you want to be in.
Just type your key words into the search bar.
Bonus points if you find anyone who shares a contact with you.
Engage
From the results of your stalking - are any of these people actively posting 'content'? Check the 'Activity' section in their profile.
Only around 1% of all LI users are posting regular content.
Let's define content as writing posts about things other than job moves, congratulating their team and others' achievements and attending events etc.
Content would usually be something that you, as a stranger to them, could comment on as it often focusses on some sort of subject matter that people outside their own circle might engage with.
If some of the people you'd like to get to know are posting content then liking and commenting on their posts is a brilliant way of them noticing you and makes the third part of the strategy much easier.
As a content writer on LI, I bloody love it when people engage with me. They're like little balls of fluffy love throwing me a life jacket in the choppy sea of life.
Talk
LinkedIn is an online platform but that doesn't stop you from engaging in real life (I count Zoom as real life) with the people you meet there.
And if you really want to use LI to build a strong network then this is the most powerful part.
You can use what you gleaned in Stalk and Engage to make the transition to Talk much easier.
If you found people you have something directly in common with, use this as a conversation opener when you send a connection request. The same goes for people you have in common (as long as the people really are those you know as opposed to LinkedIn collect-a-contacts). It's useful to have a 'hook' to make a cold contact warmer.
And if you've had a few engagements with people either in the comments on their posts, then this is a super social lube to sliding smoothly into their DMs!
From there to Talk you might ask if they'd like to have a short virtual coffee, perhaps backed up with a very specific purpose and request which is time limited:
"I'm trying to find out more about strategic leadership roles in other FMCG organisations and I'd love to chat to you for 10 minutes to ask you about your experiences of working for X business".
Make it easy for them to understand how they can help you out and that you don't want to take a huge chunk of time out of their life.
I'd love to hear how you get on with this strategy so please do hit reply and talk to me if you like. I'm a human behind this newsletter (currently sitting typing this from my parents' dining table while they watch television VERY LOUDLY in another room) and I'm always up for a chat - especially with my lovely newsletter subscribers.