Reaching out to hiring managers on LinkedIn

[Deleted]

I am currently applying for jobs. I signed up for the "Jobseeker" version (waste of money? IDK yet). 

I have found some of the hiring managers or recruiters for the jobs I've applied for on LinkedIn. Have you ever reached out to someone as a means of following up on your application? If so, what did you say? Was it effective? 

If not, what's the point of LinkedIn for searching for a job? Any tips? Most of my actual contacts are more likely to respond to email (and it's easy to email them) so I'm not sure how to best utilize it.

[Poppy]

I have used it to find the manager's name for my cover letter but not actually contacted anyone through it. However, I'd consider contacting someone directly especially if we had a shared connection.

I think it's good for finding postings, finding people who might get me an "in" with a given company, and it's just good to have a polished profile and lots of endorsements.

[Deleted]

Jul 21, 2014 21:14:58 GMT -5 Poppy said:

I have used it to find the manager's name for my cover letter but not actually contacted anyone through it. However, I'd consider contacting someone directly especially if we had a shared connection.

I think it's good for finding postings, finding people who might get me an "in" with a given company, and it's just good to have a polished profile and lots of endorsements.

This is the hard thing too. The person I found who I believe is the recruiter for the position(s) I applied to yesterday is connected to 13 of my connections. But a lot of people just add people locally who are in the same field, or who they may have met once. Do I reach out to all 13 people and ask "do you actually know Heather?"

4 of those 13 connections are people who I worked closely with and know I'm looking for a job (one was my direct supervisor and told me about several people at different companies she'd be happy to connect me with). I feel like if any of them knew this recruiter well, they would have mentioned it. IDK.  I am terrible at this networking thing, lol.

[crashgizmo]

Jul 22, 2014 9:24:10 GMT -5 @buckybells said:

Jul 21, 2014 21:14:58 GMT -5 Poppy said:

I have used it to find the manager's name for my cover letter but not actually contacted anyone through it. However, I'd consider contacting someone directly especially if we had a shared connection.

I think it's good for finding postings, finding people who might get me an "in" with a given company, and it's just good to have a polished profile and lots of endorsements.

This is the hard thing too. The person I found who I believe is the recruiter for the position(s) I applied to yesterday is connected to 13 of my connections. But a lot of people just add people locally who are in the same field, or who they may have met once. Do I reach out to all 13 people and ask "do you actually know Heather?"

4 of those 13 connections are people who I worked closely with and know I'm looking for a job (one was my direct supervisor and told me about several people at different companies she'd be happy to connect me with). I feel like if any of them knew this recruiter well, they would have mentioned it. IDK.  I am terrible at this networking thing, lol.

In this instance i would reach out to the 4 people you know "better" of your shared connections and ask if they know the hiring manager. I think that since they know you're looking it wouldn't be out of the ordinary, and the worst they could say is "I don't really know her". I did this a few times while job hunting and most of the time the people were willing to either introduce me via email, put in a good word for me, or say I could use their name when I followed up.