Leveraging LinkedIn: Increase Your Social Equity and Unlock Opportunities

One of the biggest missed opportunities I see is how people leverage LinkedIn. Most of us spend hours a day doomscrolling on TikTok, YouTube, and Instagram, but only turn to LinkedIn when we want to find a new role.

As the old saying goes: "You get what you put in."

Now, you're ready to find a new challenge and you realize you have a small network. You haven’t built any relationships with recruiters or hiring managers. And you start applying to suitable open roles out there. You don’t tailor the about section of your CV to any of the job descriptions and you copy-paste the same message whenever you are connecting with anyone that has an open role.

This is a recipe for failure as this is the approach that most people take. As time passes and you get little to no replies, you become frustrated and desperate. You start commenting the word “interested” on each and every open role out there without taking the time to personally reach out to the hiring manager and pitch your profile.

So, what can we do to exponentially increase our chances?

1. Provide Value Without Seeking Reward

Whenever you read an interesting article or discover a new tool or concept that comes across as useful, take a few minutes to share it with your network. Articulate why you see value in it. How did it help you? Make this a ritual as it only takes a couple of minutes a day and as you share your insights and provide value, you’re slowly starting to build social equity. A few times a week, I take a look at the most interesting roles that open in the region I am based in and share them with my network.

2. Connect with Leaders in Your Industry

Connect with people who are already at the level you want to get to and seek advice. Try and understand how they got there. What mistakes did they make along the way and what did they learn?

"What got you here, won’t get you there."

As I was getting ready to transition from an individual contributor to a leadership role, it took me a long time to realize that in order to be successful in that role, I had to change my perception of what drives success for someone in a leadership position.

3. Share Your Knowledge

Sometimes we forget challenges we had a year or two ago. What we perceive as trivial today was challenging not too long ago.

Make a habit of sharing your successes and learnings with your network. If you could go back in time, what would you like to tell your past self? How could you share what you learned in a way that’s easily digestible by the version of yourself from five years ago?

4. Be Consistent

There is no substitute for hard work. There are no hacks and no shortcuts. It’s exponentially easier to spend 10 minutes a week, over a couple of years, to grow your network than trying to make up for it in a month or two by putting in tens of hours a week.

Conclusion

I am a strong believer that luck is where opportunity meets preparation. The best opportunities in life that I was presented with came at a time when I wasn’t looking for a change. The effort that I put in to build and grow my network to connect with leaders in my industry started paying off.