LinkedIn Lazarus. Pt. 2

Well, previously, we were learning about my experience with LinkedIn and the amazingly poor service they provide. This isn't a dig against LinkedIn, I mean they just hit 1B people, so, they must be doing something well.

I've read "heard" hundreds, if not thousands of times during the job search you should just go to LinkedIn. My initial thoughts are - 'cool, and do what?'

Here's a few tricks that hopefully help you navigate the "professional Facebook." Nope, it isn't LinkedIn messages or "doom-scrolling", so please put away that credit card for Premium.

Manual: Look at your phone and dial everyone on your contacts list or any organizations, communities, and/or people that you've worked with previously.

1. Now, press dial, most people will send you to voice mail or text you back, but I found that the proactive nature of smiling and dialing became a really powerful feeling. One that overcomes the defeatist "doom-scrolling", seeing all these happy people with their new jobs, obsequious thank you's to companies that had laid them off six months prior, and jobs that have been over-applied, shared, and "reshared for exposure" sake.

Automation: Download your contacts list, your LinkedIn data (connections), and any other mass emails/communities that you belong to. It's very easy to download your LinkedIn data, I promise, even my mother can do it.

1. Then go to ChatGPT (paid or free) and ask it to do the following.
2. I call ChatGPT - Chatty. "Hey Chatty, let's do some networking like I'm a master 'Netweaver' and I'm trying to connect companies, people, and my connections together. We want to upload my LinkedIn data, my list of companies, and compile a summary of companies that we're connected, too. (You can do several variations of this)
3. It should give you a summary of companies, connections, and then use that as your career compass for networking.

An additional way to do this is take that list of connections and then Google the "company + email format) and use that format with the list that you previously created.

1. A product that I like to use Signal Hire. They have a great Chrome Extension that will pull in the information and then use that one email profile to validate the email and then apply to the rest of your list.
2. This will not always be 100% accurate, but it does have a high-accuracy rate.

Now send out that warm email to your connections and ask for a 12 minutes of their time based around x, y, z subject and make sure that you use Calendly to avoid the "back and forth" of scheduling.

Will this guarantee a connection, a follow-up and/or call? No. But, it certainly will help increase your odds of a discussion, a potential connection, and/or get you out of the "doom-scrolling" phase of life.

Feel free and connect with me to follow 2024's LinkedIn resurrection!