Five telephone calls one hour later, 160 return emails: How one man used LinkedIn to help his sister find potential jobs.
With today’s current US economy, job seekers need to be creative in their job search. Using time and resources in a different way is important to not getting stuck in the black hole of online and often useless job search websites. I have over 5,700 first line contacts on LinkedIn and receive many networking emails but last week I received this one:
Subject: Witness the power of Networking
Hello Jo,
I wanted to take a moment to thank everyone that responded to my email yesterday and to share the power of Networking with others in LinkedIn.
Yesterday I reached out to a large group of first level contacts who work in the Staffing or Recruiting area. I asked them to take a look at my sister’s professional resume. She is a mainframe programmer looking for a new position. Within the first hour she had her first 5 telephone calls. I had more than 160 emails from people making commitments to contact her or to pass her resume along to someone involved in her area. I was impressed with how powerful networking is.
So thank you to everyone that responded.
Jim Teeter
http://www.linkedin.com/in/jimteeter
Jim also shared some of his favorite valuable resources for networking.
Jim’s original email follows:
Dear Jo,
As a fellow Staffing or Recruiting professional, I would like to ask a favor of my LinkedIn contacts.
I would like to recommend Sandy Kucheravy as an excellent computer programming candidate. She is looking for a mainframe programming position. Her experience is in the IBM environment (MVS, z/OS). Her strengths are COBOL, CICS, VSAM, JCL, IMS. Sandy has worked domestically and internationally
Please take a look at her resume and if you know of a position please contact her. If you know of someone else that might have a need for someone of Sandy's caliber, please pass her information along.
Sandy is my sister and there is no fee if you can find her a position.
Thanking you in advance.
Jim Teeter
When you are a job seeker and things aren’t going quite as well as you’d like, you have to remember that people are normally willing to help you if you ask them. Jim’s email is a perfect example. Yes perhaps his sister had a good resume or qualifications but it all boiled down to Jim reaching out to his contacts and everybody rallying to help her.
As a job seeker, use your creativity in reaching out to your contacts on LinkedIn or other social networks. Use every invitation you receive as an opportunity to share information that may be useful to your contacts and to tell each contact a little about your job search and background. When someone accepts your invitation, do the same. Don’t bore people or overwhelm them but be brief by using your most concise elevator pitch. Offer to help in return. After all, it is about paying it forward and knowing that people will be gracious in helping you.
If you have any ideas or comments, please share them by posting them here instead of emailing them to me. Everyone will appreciate your ideas and experiences. Thanks.
Send me an invitation on LinkedIn if you’d like and I’ll be happy to connect to you. http://www.linkedin.com/in/joguerra
