The LinkedIn Hack by Skip Freeman

Great tips by Skip Freeman


The LinkedIn “Hack”
By: Skip Freeman on June 23rd, 2011 at 1:30 pm

In Job Searching, Networking, Personal Branding, Positioning, Social Media

Throughout my series of blogs, as well as all of the other great ones featured on this site, you have been learning powerful ways to create your brand and position yourself for success. That, of course, helps you to know what message to get in front of a hiring manager or other persons of influence. Equally important, though, is determining precisely who the hiring manager (or other persons of influence) is that you need to get that information in front of. In this blog, I will show you how to quickly and easily make that all-important determination using the LinkedIn “hack.”
Your LinkedIn connections

Most everyone knows the tremendous power of LinkedIn. Still, there are also limitations, and two of the more significant ones are the following:

•You need CONNECTIONS; and

•In order to see most of those connections (beyond your first degree), you need a PAID account.

Wouldn’t it be great if you could view over 95% of ALL profiles on LinkedIn whether or not they are in your network—without a paid account? Well, actually, you can! Let me explain how that’s possible. (Significant to note here, however, is that the technique covered here does NOT negate the tremendous value of a LinkedIn paid account; It actually complements it.)

Google indexes public profiles from LinkedIn. The LinkedIn “hack” is an easy and powerful way to access those profiles in Google.

The LinkedIn “Hack” – An Example

•Go to www.google.com

•Copy and paste the following search string into Google:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Chemical engineer” AND “Georgia Tech” AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers

The phrases within the parentheses are the variables which you can modify depending upon the people you want to target. (Change the company, the school, etc. You may, for example, want to search for “vice president” AND “general electric” AND sales.)

The phrases outside the parentheses are the “required” constants. These constants force Google to only look at people’s profiles and eliminates discussions, questions, answers to questions, job postings, polls and all of the other information available on LinkedIn. (Remember: “who” to get your brand in front of is our objective here.)

Two limitations to this approach

There are, however, two limitations to this approach: (1) If a profile is marked “private” Google won’t find it; and (2) The person has to have put the key words you are looking for in his/her profile.

So, for example, if you are looking for a “Georgia Tech” graduate, the person has to have used “Georgia Tech” in building his or her profile. If they used “Georgia Institute of Technology,” for example, then you won’t find them unless you do a second search using those key words. (Other Boolean operators such as OR and NOT don’t work as well in this so-called “hack,” so you should stick with the AND operator.)

Results:

•If I use the above search string, I find 3 people who either are or were a “chemical engineer” at “Georgia Pacific,” from “Georgia Tech,” and who have a public profile on LinkedIn, and who used those particular words in their profile.

•If I change “Georgia Tech” to “Georgia Institute of Technology,” I now find 15 people.

•If I want to find all Georgia Tech grads at Georgia Pacific, I would take out “chemical engineer” and use the following:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Georgia Tech” AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers

With this search string I NOW get 2,840 results!


•If I want to find ALL names at Georgia Pacific, I can try to find hiring managers, people to network with, et al. I would use:

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (“Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers


When I do that, I get 45,000 results.

Clearly more than I can handle but a great start for finding people of interest to network with and/or contact.


•As a point of comparison, I have a very robust network (over 19 million out to my 3rd degree). When I search for Georgia Pacific people within my network, I get 10,500 results. Thus, you can see how the “hack” greatly extends your view into the world of LinkedIn.

•A way to manage this quantity of information is to go back and put in qualifying key words. For example, if I go back and put in a qualifying key word such as “sales” I get 24,000 results.

site:www.linkedin.com intitle:linkedin (sales AND “Georgia Pacific”) -intitle:profile -intitle:updated -intitle:blog -intitle:directory -intitle:jobs -intitle:groups -intitle:events -intitle:answers


So, if you’ve become frustrated and discouraged using the more traditional methods of trying to find just the right people to put your information in front of, then you should seriously consider using this powerful, highly workable LinkedIn “hack.” It can literally save you hundreds of hours of time and eliminate a great deal of frustration and effort.


A personal success story

Let me conclude this week’s blog with a personal success story using the LinkedIn “hack.”

Last year our daughter, who is a university student studying public relations and communications, was seeking an internship in Nashville, specifically at Gaylord Entertainment. Even within my robust community on LinkedIn only 200 or so people were either “current” or “past” employees of Gaylord Entertainment. Enter the LinkedIn “hack.”

Using the “hack,” we uncovered over 2,300 people, and among that group was exactly someone she needed to reach out to. She crafted a powerful cover letter positioning her brand and what she could do for Gaylord, mailed it via certified mail, followed up with a phone call and email, got an interview and landed the internship! And, by the way, the person she contacted would never have been able to have been easily identified using traditional methods.

Dirty little secrets of HR

(TechRepublic By Toni Bowers March 16, 2011)


Takeaway: Those bad assumptions you’ve made about HR? They might be true.

I got into work this morning and started plowing through my inbox. I saw an email from Readers’ Digest about an upcoming stories on what HR really thinks when it comes to the hiring process.

I seem to remember Readers’ Digest being this kind of mild little magazine, not particularly known for its cynicism, with regular features that ranged from corny jokes to stories in which someone had to fend off a deranged grizzly bear for four days. The stories were, ultimately, uplifting. So that’s the kind of expectation I had when I took a peek into the upcoming stories.

After the peek? I think I’d rather take my chances with the deranged grizzly bear. It’s not that I didn’t know all this, I just didn’t think HR would be so proud of it. Here are some examples:

In what HR really thinks about your resume:

• “When it comes to getting a job, who you know really does matter. No matter how nice your résumé is or how great your experience may be, it’s all about connections.” -HR director at a health-care facility
• “We will judge you based on your e-mail address. Especially if it’s something inappropriate likekinkyboots101@hotmail.com or johnnylikestodrink@gmail.com.” -Rich DeMatteo, a recruiting consultant in Philadelphia
• “Résumés don’t need color to stand out. When I see a little color, I smirk. And when I see a ton of color, I cringe. And walking in and dropping off your resume is no longer seen as a good thing. It’s actually a little creepy.” -Rich DeMatteo

On what HR won’t tell you about interviews:

• “It’s amazing when people come in for an interview and say, ‘Can you tell me about your business?’ Seriously, people. There’s an Internet. Look it up.” -HR professional in New York City
• “A lot of managers don’t want to hire people with young kids, and they use all sorts of tricks to find that out, illegally. One woman kept a picture of two really cute children on her desk even though she didn’t have children [hoping job candidates would ask about them]. Another guy used to walk people out to their car to see whether they had car seats.” -Cynthia Shapiro, former human resources executive and author of Corporate Confidential: 50 Secrets Your Company Doesn’t Want You to Know
• “Is it harder to get the job if you’re fat? Absolutely. Like George Clooney’s character said in Up in the Air, ‘I stereotype. It’s faster.’” -Suzanne Lucas, a former HR executive and the Evil HR Lady on bnet.com
• “If you’ve got a weak handshake, I make a note of it.” -HR manager at a medical-equipment sales firm
• “If you’re a candidate and the hiring manager spends 45 minutes talking about himself, the company or his Harley, let him. He’s going to come out of the interview saying you’re a great candidate.”  -Kris Dunn, chief human resources officer at Atlanta-based Kinetix, who blogs athrcapitalist.com

On HR and salary negotiations:

• “There’s one website that drives all HR people crazy: salary.com. It supposedly lists average salaries for different industries, but if you look up any job, the salary it gives you always seems to be $10,000 to $20,000 higher than it actually is. That just makes people mad.” -HR directorat a public relations agency
• “On salary, some companies try to lock you in early. At the first interview, they’ll tell me to say, ‘The budget for this position is 40K to 45K. Is that acceptable to you?’ If the candidate accepts, they’ll know they’ve got him or her stuck in that little area.” -Ben Eubanks, HR professional in Alabama
• “You think you’re all wonderful and deserve a higher salary, but here in HR, we know the truth. And the truth is, a lot of you aren’t very good at your jobs, and you’re definitely not as good as you think you are.” -HR professional at a midsize firm in North Carolina