Friday, June 12, 2009

He Found His New Boss on LinkedIn

LinkedIn Success Story:

Bryan Webb joined LinkedIn to connect with various people. While job searching, he performed an “Advanced Search” of LinkedIn members to see who was employed at a particular company he wanted to work for. He hoped to make contact with someone who could assist him in getting a job interview.

During his LinkedIn People Search (in which he used the company name as a keyword), Bryan discovered that the COO of the company was on LinkedIn. When he looked at the COO's profile, he noticed that he and the COO were indirectly connected – just two degrees away from each other through LinkedIn contacts. Bryan emailed his contact (whom we'll call "B") to ask if "B" could facilitate an Introduction to the COO. “B” passed the request for Introduction (along with some praise about Bryan) to one of his LinkedIn contacts (whom we'll call "C"). Through LinkedIn, “C” forwarded to the COO the Introduction request with a note that Bryan be given a chance, based on "C's" knowledge of "B" being trustworthy.

Through this lengthy network of connections, Bryan got the interview and the job. Bryan later found out the COO had known “C” for 25 years and always valued his recommendations. But who knows if Bryan and the COO would ever have met if not for LinkedIn.

3 comments:

Simon said...

Susan,
I think you've just distilled 100 pages of books and articles on Linkedin down to the shortest and best real world example of how to use Linkedin.

How can anyone fail to 'get it' from this exemple. EXCELLENT!

simon at virtualjobcoach.com

Carolyn Boone Duncan said...

Great example, I will use it to encourage my Job Search Skills participants.

Jeanette Waterman said...

Susan,

This a great article! I would love to post it to my students and give you credit!

Jeanette
Virginia Commonwealth University Career Center