I’ve been a member of joblesstrackworld since the summer when I wound up my own business. I’m getting nowhere with the usual job sites so have been spending a bit more time delving through LinkedIn to find people from my previous career (which ended 8 years ago).

Just wondering how people get on with finding work from there – do you aggressively go through their contacts and try to connect with those that look useful or is it the done thing to ask for introductions instead, do the groups actually work (they seem to be very fragmented) etc. etc. etc.

I wouldn’t say aggressive but you do need to be pretty active to get anything from it. I work freelance and I’ve had a few things from my exhibit and exhibition design profile on linkedin. Set up a detailed profile, join groups, post on those groups when anything relevant crops up. Whenever anyone connects with me I reply with offers of what I could do for them and a link to my website. A lot of the group posts border on spam so they aren’t that interesting to read but sometimes there’s good stuff there. Its just emails so pretty throw away so I wouldn’t worry about contacting anyone that sounds useful.

Ensure your profile is fully filled in and publicly visible. Ensure you add all your relevant skills. Get back in contact with as many people as you can, then make sure you update things regularly. I don’t have *ANY* recruiters in my linked-in network yet have three or four a week trying to contact me to offer me job

edit – groups work too as the recruiter do seem to go through them aggressively.

if you want to add me and check out my linked in profile, search for me – check my STW profile, I’m the only one on linkedin AFAIK

Another fellow joblesstrackworld here. I’ve resisted LinkedIn in the past, but my soundings have suggested that it is useful for finding work as apparently recruiters do search it for potential candidates etc. The advice above looks good to me and is in line with what I’ve heard elsewhere. It’s worth thinking through who you want to target and producing a good, detailed/ relevant profile that you keep up to date – and indeed I should probably get on and do this myself rather than posting on here… Good luck with it!

As yet another joblesstrackworlder and ex recruiter 🙁 My experience of using LinkedIn to search for candidates was variable – first off, the recruiter needs to be subscribed to the “Pro” version and that’s expensive and usually comes out of the recruiters own pocket! Having said that when you’ve trawled the same CV’s on Jobsite, CV Library and elsewhere for the umpteenth time trying to fill a vacancy you’ll look almost anywhere that gives you a new pool of talent to tap! BUT it’s quite tricky to configure searches that give you a manageable list of potential contacts. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m off to LinkedIn to update my profile………

Mountain Bikers in Business

And get some recommendations from previous clients or work colleagues too!