Do you use LinkedIn for sourcing? Everybody does these days, right? Would you like to be more efficient, reach more relevant people, and do this all for free? Perhaps you are aware of some of the points below, but I hope you will find something new here too.
Join LinkedIn Groups
Suppose one of your areas is, like mine, SAP Consulting. Search for groups using the word SAP in the group search box. The groups will be shown in the order of size. You will find:
- SAP Community with almost 15,000 members
- SAP Network Global (12,000+) … Active 12,000 members
- SAP People Forum almost 8,000 members etc...
Join these groups. The instant benefit is that all of the members are now in your network even if they are beyond the 3-level connection distance.
Search for Group Members and Send Them Messages for Free
There are two ways to search for people in a group. First, there’s a simple search box within the group members tab. You can search for members by keywords. The advantage is that you will see 500 results.
Now notice that you can “send a message” to any of these people using a link under their name in the list of results. If you go to the very last page of the search results, you will likely see people who are connected to you only through the group, yet you can send them a direct message. That is just like sending a LinkedIn “Inmail” but is free.
The second way to search is to use the new advanced people search functionality. You are able to check one or more of your groups on the advanced people search page to target your search at these groups’ members. You can now combine your search with keywords, target title, company, location, etc. If you have a free account you would only see 100 results. (It used to be 500 just recently.) I don’t see it as a big limitation; there are always ways to run a variety of searches to see more results. If you mouse over a person’s profile in the results list you will see the link “send message” for people who are either connected to you or are in your group. If you go to a profile view, you will see the same “send message” link there as well. More Tips on Using LinkedIn
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