Discover the Secrets of LinkedIn: Tips for Building Meaningful Relationships During Your Job Hunt

Whether you're embarking on a job search for the first time, after an extended career break, or to move up in your profession, networking is the most valuable skill you will gain in your career.

Networking doesn't have to be an intimidating piece of the career puzzle. Learning how to network is something that took me time to learn. Mustering the confidence to reach out to a mutual connection or former colleague took time and practice. Then, as I became more comfortable reaching out to colleagues, I began to build my confidence in reaching out to individuals in the industry I was interested in learning or transitioning to.

These are my research strategies and steps to authentically and effectively build my LinkedIn network.

Conduct company research.

This can be done by simply searching the top companies in the field you're interested in working for. For example, if you're interested in cybersecurity, your search may look like "best cybersecurity companies to work for." From there, open a new tab and research the first five to seven companies in the list you get from your search. That may give you results from a variety of sources. I recommend starting with the results you receive from Glassdoor. Glassdoor is an excellent source for reading reviews ratings, and learning about company culture and benefits.

While reading reviews can be helpful, do your best to consider the cons. I recommend reading at least 10-15 reviews. That will help you gain insight into common trends in what values may be lacking with that company and if those are important to you. And, even if they are, it's still worth applying, as those are valuable sources for crafting questions during the interview.

For example, if multiple reviews mention a lack of leadership, craft your questions to target leadership styles for your potential manager. They could ask, "How would you describe your leadership style?" or "How is change communicated from the top-down?" and "Within my research, I read there has been a significant change in leadership, how has that affected team morale, and what qualities do you look for in a candidate to contribute to improving it?"

Utilize LinkedIn and follow the top companies in your desired industry.

Once you've found the leading companies, start following them on LinkedIn. Read through their posts and learn about the company's culture. And, outside of LinkedIn, research case studies. See what other brands have benefitted from the company's brands or services, and learn about it. The search for a case study will look like "Company X case studies." From there, you will get results from various sources; start with the first one and work your way down.

Look for mutual connections or make new ones.

After studying the company, start getting to know the employees. Start by connecting with any mutual connections you already have at that company or even former company alums at the company you're currently at.

If you have no mutual connections, connect with the team members who carry the role you're most interested in. Then, start setting invite connections to the team's lead, senior manager, or director. If you don't feel ready yet to connect with them, perhaps you're working on crafting a thoughtful message to include with your connection invitation; start by following them.

Introduce yourself.

Once you've identified your connections, personalize your connection invitation for invitations to the contacts you already know or are alums of an existing or past employer.

Your message may look something like this:

For invitations to the connections you don't already know, your message could look similar to the one above, with some modifications.

It may look like this:

The items in bold are the parts you can fill in with your information to fit what you want to communicate. With any communication, the most vital component to remember is to be considerate of your recipient's time.

These three tips are intended to be approachable while also being effective.