Trading Test Drives for Career Tips at LinkedIn

January 27, 2012 4:20 PM PT

Last week, we spent a Friday afternoon at LinkedIn’s Mountain View campus, exchanging test drives for career tips and resolutions. (Morgan, these tips will come in handy sooner than you know!)  We brought a fleet of brand new 2012 cars, and LinkedIn brought the energy and sage online networking advice the Silicon Valley is known for. Spending a lunch hour with the team behind the world’s largest professional networking website turned out be a darn good Friday afternoon at the office. LinkedIn employees were entered in a raffle to win the coveted prize of a week-long excursion in a GM car of their choice and participated in test drives of the Chevrolet Volt, Chevrolet Camaro, Cadillac CTS-V Coupe and GMC Acadia Denali. We had such a good time visiting, who knows…we might just stop back again sometime.

Nicole Williams, LinkedIn’s Connection Director, has these tips to share for kick-starting your career in 2012. Can’t get enough? Check out my profile and the LinkedIn site for even more great advice:

1. Love the one you’re with. If your resolution is sticking with the job you have, don’t be lulled into thinking this is the year to sit back and phone it in. In fact, the best strategy for keeping your job is to build your skills and put them out there for all to see, just as if you were tackling the greatest job search of your life.

Not sure what new skills are going to make a difference? Go to LinkedIn Skills and type in a talent you have or check out a listing of related skills and new talents you need to stay competitive in your position. You never know – you just may end up with the raise you didn’t dare to put on your resolution list.

2. Birds of a Feather. If your goal is to get promoted this year, don’t do it alone. Success breeds success. Not only do you want to share your relationships and expertise with others, you want others to share their contacts and knowledge with you. One of the most powerful things you can do to build your reputation is to leverage the influence of others. You do this by seeking connections and asking for recommendations.

If this sounds daunting, there are two things to consider that will make it easier. First, it’s a two-way street. You need to demonstrate you have something to offer by having a thorough profile and your own Rolodex to share. Next, even though it’s for a professional purpose, this is a personal ask. Personalize your connection requests and specify what the recommendation you’re seeking should entail so it’s effective for you and not too time consuming for them.

3. Be Discovered.  If your resolution is the more passive goal of being tapped on the shoulder and courted into a new career opportunity, then you may be in luck. With 75 of the Fortune 100 companies using LinkedIn as a recruiting tool, it’s never been easier to be discovered. But here’s the thing: Even the best hiring managers are not mind readers.

Fill out your profile completely (include your volunteer experience and avoid over-used buzzwords that count as filler) and finally add a photo that looks like you at your professional best. Now reach out to at least 50 connections so those second and third tier prospective employers can track you down.

4. The Early Bird. One of the most exciting things that happens in a burgeoning economy is a renewed sense of optimism and with it, the creation of new jobs. But here’s the trick: it happens quickly and usually long before a job posting is ever created.

If you’re strategically tracking industry trends and following companies via LinkedIn, you have the potential to be on top of the job long before the masses start competing for it. Initiative and innovation are two things that hiring managers are looking for; so, writing to the CEO of the company you’re following after reading the article on LinkedIn Today that he tweeted and suggesting a new marketing strategy may very well be the key to a job that you didn’t know existed.

5. Extend Yourself. If there’s any single thing you can do in this New Year to make a difference in your career, it is to put yourself out there and network. Opportunities are found through relationships, and I can guarantee that if you’re stuck in your career (and frankly, even if you’re not), you don’t have enough of them.

The whole concept of networking can conjure up images of awkward asks like, “Can you help me find a job?” over a highly-orchestrated networking lunch or event after work. The truth is that networking should be happening anywhere and everywhere and is simply the building of authentic relationships. That means a little get-to-know you long before you need anything is the difference between getting the job, promotion, recommendation, introduction, raise… and not.