Layoffs and LinkedIn: A Professional’s Primer Into The World of Social Media – shorespeak | Rob Shore

So many colleagues and friends are getting the news that their positions have been eliminated, right sized, down sized, etc.

Many of these folks have not taken the time to get to know the power of so many of the free social/new media tools available for professionals to connect.

More importantly if they are not using these channels to get leads for employment they are missing a tremendous resource.

These sites offer ways for business professionals to connect with former colleagues, college associates, professional group members and more.

Using the wrong social media platform will waste your time and sour you on the entire concept.

For that reason the focus of this post will be on LinkedIn:

As a business professional, LinkedIn is an ideal place to start your introduction to the social media landscape.

Sometimes I hear folks say that they don’t get it. They don’t understand why they should join a site like LinkedIn. As a primer read: Top Five Reasons Why You Should Be On LinkedIn

Simply put it is the place to connect with professionals in your industry, or as LinkedIn says:

LinkedIn is an interconnected network of experienced professionals from around the world, representing 170 industries and 200 countries. You can find, be introduced to, and collaborate with qualified professionals that you need to work with to accomplish your goals.

Use LinkedIn for:

Reconnecting with a host of current and prior associates across most of the firms you have worked for. The best way to get this done is to use the Import Contacts feature. This will allow you to securely download the contents of your Gmail, Yahoo, AOL or Outlook address book into LinkedIn. From there you can automatically see who in your contacts is already a part of the LinkedIn network.
Also use the functionality that allows you to search for connections via your college affiliation and your former employers.
Joining Groups allows you to get connected to those folks that share your interests and past employers. For instance I belong to Financial Services Marketing, National Speakers Association, and Executive Suite. These groups allow members to have discussions, share news, and get updates of targeted interest.
Get recommendations. Admittedly I need to improve my use of this important tool. The single best way to get more recommendations is to write them. Alternately there is a ‘Can you endorse me?‘ request feature that you can use to request a recommendation from a specific contact.
In the Answers section you can ask questions of your contacts, or post answers to questions in your area of expertise. Either way you are able to demonstrate knowledge and increase exposure.

While some folks use LinkedIn to collect contacts like kids collect baseball cards (they still do that, right?), I prefer to stay true to my intent which is to stay connected, albeit virtually, to so many folks that I would otherwise lose contact with.

Rather than recreate the blogging wheel, I have attached some links which you may find helpful regarding LinkedIn and it’s suggested uses:

Earlier this month Guy Kawasaki wrote a post entitled Ten Ways to Use LinkedIn to Find a Job. I strongly recommend this post to anyone that is new to LinkedIn as well as seasoned users.