how to network on linkedin - solo show

full transcript

auto-generated from the audio, so expect a few typos. the audio is the source of truth.

all righty good morning happy monday we got the candle going this morning i'll tell you what i think i think one of the issues with burning candles is that don't burn it all the way right the first time i learned this from my wife you have to like burn the candle all the way like the first time you use it um it i i've got a little little hole issue going on here on this candle but still smells good um trying out a new brand uh just ordered a gingerbread candle so that should be great excited about that uh all my candle fans check in

um especially on the holidays but good morning it's good to see y'all this morning please comment say hey would love to hear from you would love to know where you're tuning in from um you know we we have people all over the globe um tune in and uh it's pretty cool um so let's know we tune in from uh let's see here i'm checking make sure everything looks good we're live we're live looks good all right cool there we go jeff's gonna see you this morning ricardo it's good to see you this morning as well i'm excited for this episode uh so again uh for

those of you tuning in first and foremost i want to give a quick rundown on what guidance counselor two point oh is so i've been doing this live show uh for almost six years these six years this march which is crazy to think about um and uh really this this this uh this live show kind of started Just as a way to give back, right?

So I started this during COVID. At the time, I was hands-on recruiting in the Nashville market. And once COVID hit, I saw that really the developer economy and the developer market as a whole was going to be distributed across the country, if not the globe. So I realized I needed something to basically share at scale. And so that's why I started this thing. It was just me, myself, and I, kind of very similar to this, just yapping on the internet every day. And then had people come in and want to interview with me and tell their stories. And so it's kind of morphed into what it is today, which has been awesome.

I've had some amazing guests from boot camp grads who've had success finding a job all the way to folks at Netflix, Google, et cetera. But as of late, admittedly, one, I just haven't done a good job at getting guests on the show. But also, two, it kind of aligns with what we're doing at Torque and wanting to really create a lot of resources um uh to help people throughout their job search and i get a lot of questions i mean my dms um i i'm trying to get better at them but i'm usually about two to four weeks behind on dms and there's so many questions around the same thing it's like hey taylor uh can you help me with can you help me with this or how to better position myself in a job search or you know how how how to use linkedin which is what we're talking about today so I have a variety of questions.

So what I, what I try to do is I try to go, I try to go reason why we do content, try to help you. Right. And so between me not getting guests on, I also, I just, my third kid is going to be here at the end of December. So really what my goal is over the next few weeks is to really do these live streams and help guide people throughout the job search. I mean, even I'm helping, my dad right now, as it is kind of guide him through the job search. And, and there's, whether you're in the restaurant industry or the tech industry or the, the, the, the marketing industry, finding a job is pretty much applicable throughout any industry.

And so, um, i want to so i'm going live every mondays and tuesdays um to basically uh walk you through the job search so when i'm done with this series you should be able to watch every single one of my videos and at least have a very good understanding a very good base on how you should find a job so today we're going to go over how to use linkedin to network i still think linkedin is an incredibly undervalued tool resource and not many people know how to use it and so today we're gonna talk about how to how to so today and tomorrow LinkedIn focus so today is about how to kind of network how to use it we've already talked about how to create it if you go to torque YouTube I have that live stream on there but today we're gonna really kind of get into tactical things and staying tomorrow there may be some overlap just because it's LinkedIn as a platform kind of kind of dive into it but today we're gonna talk about really how to effectively use LinkedIn and just to network, to find people, to connect with people, you know, how to send a DM.

So that's what we're going to go over today. So again, please say, hey, if you're tuning in, again, I usually tell people this is a networking session, right? So what I would do if I were you is I would DM every person in the chat, be like, hey, it was good to see you on Guidance Counselor this morning. And if you stick with me, right, if you stick with me and if you stuck with me for the last six years and DM to every guest and every person in the chat, Your network would be incredibly expansive, which, again, is the goal for what we're doing at Torque.

Jason's doing the same thing at Tech Commute. So, again, have some more people tuning in. Ricardo, Chris, and just good to see you. Cool glasses. They make you look more technical. Great. That's exactly what I was going for, Emery. I appreciate that. Chris, it's good to see you this morning as well. First and foremost, I want to give a few quick announcements. I want to give a shout out to AppRite. I am a hero. Go check them out. Love the team out there. Great little product they have. I know Jason is an AppRite hero as well. If you do go check out their product, you jump into the Discord.

If you talk to anybody at AppRite, tell them the Torque Boys sent you. Also, do you want to give some shout out, not some shout out, some announcements for the Torque land? First and foremost, if you have not checked it out yet, Torque.community, our new community site. It looks great. It's pretty. It's got like, you know, colors and things. um and uh but but two quick announcements one uh we have our ambassador um a signups open and they are still open until december fifth so we finally picked an end date um right now we have close to sixty ambassadors we are not taking everybody um we are not taking everybody um we really want to pour into the ambassador group we had a great all hands last week in atlanta i still need to try to find a time to recap that to you all um but but the the all hands was amazing and basically One of the things that really came out of it was our ambassador program and really pouring into ambassadors, giving them more resources to not only network and expand the Torque name, but also again, pour into them as individuals.

And so if you are interested and you wanna rep the brand of TORQ, please go sign up on torq.community. If you scroll down a little bit, it's there, but signups are closed December fifth. And we will not open these up probably for another year. So this is it. And then also too, we have our mentor mentee program signups open. So if you are looking for a mentor, please go sign up. If you are a senior individual in tech and have always wanted to be a mentor, but you just don't have the time, we are going to basically get you to the finish line. So we are going to pair you up with people.

We are going to help manage your meeting cadence and really help make this mentor mentee program successful. Right now we have around eleven mentors and twenty two mentees, which is great. Kind of a two to one, very intimate style setting there. But that also closes up December fifth. So December fifth is the date you need to know on both the ambassador program and the mentor mentee program. Also, if you want to know when I go live with things like this, just text live to six one five two three five five six five zero. This is my number. It's me. And I just shoot out a text every morning when I go live.

Just so you know what I'm talking about. If you want to hop in. All right, we got a few more comments this morning. Jason's here. Hello, Jason. Michael, it's good to see you. Mazen, good to see you. So again, got to give a shout out to React Native Podcast or React Native Radio. Mazen, what do you call it? It's React Native Podcast, right? React Native Radio. I don't know. Mazen, chime in. But anyways, I was with the crew last week talking about job search and mobile hiring, and it was a great conversation. Mazen is a fantastic guest with Robin and the team at Infinite Red.

So it was a great chat. Can't wait for that to drop. Let's see here. What else? There we go. I just want to say all hail Torque. Yep. Love it. Love it, Naz. Love it. All right, so let's go ahead and dive in here. I'm gonna go and share my screen. And let's just dive into how to network and actually use LinkedIn to network, okay? So you need to scroll in here. All right, so I wanna go over kind of a few basic building blocks here, right? So again, there's kind of three ways to use LinkedIn to network, right? They're React Native Radio. Thank you, Mazen.

I knew I was close, React Native Radio. Anyways, go check them out in the podcast store. podcast app. All right. So first thing I want to talk about is how do you network effectively on LinkedIn? And I always tell people there's really kind of three ways to use LinkedIn and really social media for that matter to find a job is one, you can post, right? I mean, literally just post. We can talk about what to post, how to post. We can definitely talk about that. The second thing is like and comment and engage with people's posts, right? I think that is a highly underrated tactic You know, we talk about a lot of times that when we show up to a meetup and we shake hands and introduce ourselves, you can do that.

Like the equivalent of that, right? The equivalent of shaking someone's hand at a meetup is literally going on linkedin and commenting and liking a post and leaving a thoughtful comment and then the third way is the dms right so um i i do want to break down first off when it comes to posting right listen i'm not asking you to post three four or five times a day right what i'm asking you to do is post once a day now the the biggest thing people ask is taylor what do i post the first thing i would tell people i'm gonna stop sharing my screen because i'm just gonna kind of give a little lay of land here When I say post, I mean document your journey.

Talk about what you're building. Talk about what you're learning. Talk about maybe something where you messed up on or you're having a hard time with. It really cuts through the noise, especially on LinkedIn. I know LinkedIn's spammy and there's a lot of like, just stupid post out there. But for me, you know, if you want kind of prompts, right? Five prompts every week. First thing is, hey, if you're employed, what are you doing at work right now? Right? Like what's interesting right now? The pushback is, I guess, is Taylor. If I start posting on LinkedIn, will it alert my employer? No, there's literally nothing that's going to alert your employer if you talk about what you're doing at work, right?

Literally, that's what my job is, is posting about what we're doing at Torque Community. It's not a sign of me leaving. If my boss has watched this, I'm not leaving. But it literally, I just talk about what we're doing at work, right? Now, so that's Mondays. Talk about what you're doing at work. Talk about something interesting. What did you implement from a tech set perspective, right? What did you, is there new enhancements you're doing? Like, just talk about what you're doing, right? If you are laid off and you don't have a job, that Monday post should be something along the lines of, hey, here's what I'm building, right?

The second thing I would post on Tuesdays is, hey, I would literally just talk about one thing you're hung up on. Right? One thing you're hung up on, Hey, I'm having problems doing this, or, Hey, I'm, I'm trying to learn this skillset and it's not working. Can someone help me? People want to help other people, especially in this market right now with the way the job search is. People genuinely want to help people. So use that to your advantage, right? Talk about, Hey, I can't figure out Kubernetes or I can't figure out, you know, this feature in AWS, right? People will jump in the comments and help you.

It's a great way to crowdsource information, right? So that's the second post. Right. Talk about what you're hung up on. The third post is maybe an accomplishment. Right. Hey, listen, last week I was able to do this. Right. So, again, documenting and accomplishments are a little bit different. Right. Accomplishments is bragging on yourself. I think there's a lot. I don't think I know. After talking to a lot of people, people have a hard time talking about yourself. Right. So what I would do is I would set aside one post a day just for the sake of this exercise on Wednesdays to be like, hey, here's what I've done.

Here's specifically how I move the needle. What that does is two things. One, it draws attention to you and what you've been doing. And two, it allows you to flesh out your ideas when you get into an interview and be able to brag about yourself. Right. One of the biggest unlocks for me as a public speaker and communicator is to just start writing. Right. Like start start. Making yourself hype out things, right? I mean, literally people are like, oh, how did you get such a great public speaker? To me, actually Twitter, like Twitter X has allowed me to become a pretty good speaker because I have to give my thoughts in a very concise, what, two hundred eighty characters is what it is now.

So if you can start framing about how you describe things in two hundred eighty characters or less, it allows you to become more of an effective speaker. Right. So that's so that's that's day three. Day four. I would literally. So on Thursdays, I would literally take a piece of content that you are watching, that you are reading. Give that person a shout out and give your thoughts on it. Right. So, for example, let's say you listen to or watch my how to write a LinkedIn the other day. Right. I would literally say, hey. I tag me because the way the LinkedIn algorithm works is that when you tag those people, some of their followers see it, right?

And then give your thoughts. Hey, I love that Taylor said this, but I don't agree with this, right? Give a little discourse there. I think it's incredibly important. And then the fifth day can be a wildcard day. You can repurpose some documenting stuff and or talk about maybe something you're getting hung up on. But at least those are four things that you can really, really start to get going, right? There are some comments here. Hold on. All right. I mean, yes, it can alert them if they follow you. But again, building in public and learning in public doesn't apply. You want to dip out. Just maybe think about which person.

Yeah, yeah, yeah. A hundred percent. Be smart about it. But again, the biggest complaint I get is, hey, if I'm going to talk about something I'm struggling with, or, Hey, if I'm gonna talk about what I'm doing at work, like that does not signal you're looking to leave. Honestly, I think it'll be a great way again, for you to frame up what you're doing. I think a lot of people get in interviews are like, I don't know what I talked to. I don't know what I've done. Right. So again, it's an exercise. um angie what's going on it's good to see you girl i love the insights on talking about what you're doing yes absolutely absolutely if you say boy my job sucks probably not good optics nope not at all um yeah absolutely i share most of my project youtube here this kind of gives us a social media strategy right like linkedin still is a great awareness tool in terms of like getting people to find you, I would still leverage LinkedIn a ton.

Now I will tell you this, LinkedIn has throttled their reach, which is a whole nother conversation of itself. When I started posting on LinkedIn in twenty twenty, my written posts would get about fifteen to twenty thousand impressions. Now they barely get a thousand. That's a whole nother conversation for another day. I don't want to get into social media kind of tactics here. But at the end of the day, if you want to pick one platform to really document your journey, I still would put LinkedIn as incredibly important. Let's see here. What was my day three? My day three was documenting your wins, right? So day one would essentially be documenting just what you're doing.

Day two would be something you're getting hung up on. Day three is wins. Day four is taking a piece of content that you recently watched, read, or consumed that you really like and add some thoughts to it. And I'm sure I have something for day five, but I can't think of it on the fly right now. Alana, it's good to see from you. It's good to see you. Roxy, it's good to see you as well. Michael comes in here. I've been sort of documenting the making of my portfolio on LinkedIn. The problem is I don't know how to explain Each day would make it. Well, I will tell you this.

Listen, any, any sort of posting publicly is going to help you. Right. I will tell you this. I think what, what people realize that you can become known for something just by posting about it. Right. Like, Even my wife the other day was like, man, I just feel like you kind of like cold brews, like your thing with online content. Like that's kind of one of the fun things. And again, the social media strategy, what you want to be known for. And I won't get into that here. What I'm saying is if you want to be known for react, even if you're a junior post about react post about what you're learning post about what you're getting hung up on post react articles.

Like if you follow the template that I just said, you'll really start to become known for something, even if you're junior. Um, all right. So. Post is the first way to use LinkedIn, right? Incredibly important. The second way to use LinkedIn is like and comment on people's posts, right? So let me go to share my screen here. But while I do it, again, I think we need to think about how we operate in person and how we scale that out virtually. So when you go to a meetup or go to a conference, you go up to somebody, you go, hey, my name is so-and-so. It's nice to meet you.

What do you do, so-and-so? I'm a this. That interaction can be scaled. When I say scaled, I mean easily across the internet if you go on LinkedIn and comment and like and engage with people's posts. It can be a very simple thing of, man, this is a great post or Or honestly, even if you don't agree with them, I've had a ton of people say, hey, Taylor, I don't agree with you and here's why. I love that. Literally, if you can go back and forth in the comments, it fuels their algorithm, which then gets you more eyeballs on your profile. When it comes to hiring in tech or just in general, it's a lot about top of mind, right?

So if you're out here engaging with somebody consistently, and then you talk about what you do over and over again, that person sees you or follows you. Then all of a sudden, if you talk about React nonstop and that person has a React job open, they post about it and you slide into their DMs, they're gonna know about you because you've been engaging with them consistently, right? The third way to use LinkedIn is the DMs, right? craft meaningful DMS and we'll go over that here in a second. So I'm going to go and share my screen. So here, here's some kind of few ways. So first off, what I would do if I were you is I would always start like, like if you just like, I answered some DMS before I went live and I got some DMS of, Hey Taylor, I got laid off today.

What do you think I should do? Right. And it depends on your background. But if you went to a boot camp or college or college institution, I honestly would start there. Right. So what I would do is I would go to up here. I would type in the search for University of South Carolina. Right. That's where I went. Right. So then so so when you type in the word University of South Carolina on the search bar of LinkedIn, I'm trying to think about the people who listen to this in audio form moving forward. I'm trying to explain this. So obviously you see that people that went to LinkedIn, you see the groups of South Carolina, there's the University of South Carolina alumni, you see people that are companies in South Carolina, And then you see posts from the University of South Carolina.

Right. I think this is a actually really good dashboard for you to work off of because you could spend an entire day networking with people, joining groups and engaging in groups. You could also engage with people who are talking about the University of South Carolina. Right. So let's go one step further here. Let's go to people. Right. And then actually, let's not go to people. Sorry, my bad. So let's go to University of South Carolina here. Let's click on the University of South Carolina. Let's go to alumni, right? So again, this goes to bootcamps too, right? So first off, for the University of South Carolina, there's a hundred eighty-nine thousand alumni for the University of South Carolina on LinkedIn, right?

Then I can drill into specific cities, right? So let's, so let's do Nashville. All right, let's do the greater, let's do Nashville here, right? So there's, so right now there's sixty-three people in the Nashville area that went to University of South Carolina. So literally what I could do – and look at this. Jason Weinstein, he went to the University of South Carolina. He's a senior VP of IT architecture. So what I would do if I were you, I would – so South Carolina football, we just – we had an awful loss on Saturday. I would play to that because, again, people who go to South Carolina, for the most part, love their football, SEC.

What I would do, Jason, stop messing with me. I don't know what you're doing, but stop messing with me. What I would do is I would go to Jason, right? So I'm going to connect with Jason. right now here's here's the thing and by the way if you have comments please or questions throw them up i can't see the stream your chat right now um so i'll get there in a second but so what i would do is i would con press the connect button with jason weinstein and then it says add a note and send without a note i would always add a note right so i would say hey hey hey jason uh go go gamecocks hate our loss on saturday um lol uh would love to connect um because i'm in nashville and in tech boom there we go right and i'm actually i'm actually just i'm actually just gonna fire it off right boom done right so now the power of the dms on linkedin is that when jason accepts it immediately goes to the top of his inbox people don't talk about this a lot right and and um i don't know why well most people just give out stupid advice but for me when The inbox feature on the Connect is pretty incredible, right?

How many times, like I don't know any other platform that you can connect with somebody, send them a message, and then once they accept the message, it goes to the top of their inbox and they have to click out of your message to make it unread, right? There's a lot of friction there to allow the user to like have to maybe respond to you, right? Which is incredibly important. And literally what I would do here for you, so I would literally just go through and I would just message people that apply to me. Right. So right here. So Adam Duff. Adam Duff's a co-founder. Right.

So if I'm trying to get business from from Adam. Right. I'd message Adam. Hey, Adam, go Gamecocks. Right. Would love to chat. Would love to meet. I'm in the Nashville area. Right. And I would go down this list and message people. Right. Get to a coffee. Get to a lunch. Get to a breakfast. Something. Right. Again, same thing here. So let's go to another one, for example. So Nashville, Nashville Software School. A great bootcamp in Nashville, right? What I would do if I graduated from Nashville software school, I would go to Nashville software school. I would go to alumni. right and then i would literally go to nashville there's sixteen hundred alumni in nashville and literally what i would do is i would message people that have jobs that went to national so like uh morally right here she's a senior software engine in my opinion i think it really boils down like like if you are junior more junior on your job search or you're in college and trying to graduate I feel that you have the best opportunity to cut through the noise.

And the reason for that is because everybody wants to help. junior folks, right? So if you are out here and you feel like you're at a disadvantage because you're a junior, you're actually not. Because more likely than not, if you message Morley, who's a senior software engineer who went to Nashville Software School and be like, hey, Morley, I'm currently at the Nashville Software School cohort, whatever they're at now. I'm looking to figure out how to get my first job in tech. Do you have a minute? Would love to pick your brain on how you found your first job in tech. I will argue that Morley is I would say, sixty, seventy percent of the time, Morley will get back to you because literally she wants to help you because y'all are both bonded by the same thing, right?

So, like, for me, like, if I was ever laid off, Right. I would go to my Ronstadt network or my Bayco network or my gun IO network. Right. You always want to start because at the end of the day, like it's kind of shared suffering. Right. It's this whole idea of building community is that we all went through the trenches together and use that to your advantage. All right. We have some comments here. I want to I want to get I want to get to these. Hold on real quick. Hold on. We have a lot of comments while I was gone. Let's see here. I disagree with too many people on LinkedIn to comment on posts.

Well, I hear you, Jeff. I hear you. Do it tactfully. You got to do it tactfully. Let's see here. I've never DMed anyone on here, so let me take notes. Yeah, again, I think DMing on LinkedIn is an incredibly, incredibly powerful tool. Roxy comes in. I started the process a while ago. Need to continue. Too many folks to add when I had no idea what I was doing. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, and you need to be pointed. Right. So I want to go over a good DM. Right. Especially if they're a stranger. If you have nothing in common, I get very specific. Right. So let's say let's say I'm a mitt.

So I go back to my buddy, Connor Bush. Connor Bush is in Nashville. He was at Evernote at the time. And he was like, how do you think I should get a job at Netflix? And I said, here's what I would do. I said, I would message people at Netflix in kind of the same area of engineering that you're doing at Evernote and ask them something. So Connor went back, he thought about what he was doing. So I guess at Evernote, they were trying to implement something that Netflix was using, right? So what Connor did is he went on the search bar, went to Netflix, typed in the search of the tech thing that they were implementing at Evernote and started messaging Netflix managers.

So what I would do in this case to craft a really good DM is one, check out their profile. Right. Admiration and flattery goes a long way. Right. So if you message me and go, hey, Taylor, I love all the content you put out. Right. That to me shows you have some sort of invested interest. Right. So so the way you do this is is if you go to a person's LinkedIn page, this is where I would really, really leverage their activities. right so one of the things so the activity portion of linkedin has gotten a huge boost lately this was a recent drop and and they're bringing past posts more to the forefront of your linkedin to me that is not a coincidence to me they probably did that so users can find past activity to use that to your advantage to network right so for example what i would do is is if you're trying to dm me i would say hey taylor i saw where you recently did a live on how to go over linkedin to network right use that to your advantage so what connor did is what he did is he went to these netflix engineering managers profiles and looked at their activity to mention something to dm so that's the first thing admiration flattery the next thing is be specific so the way connor dm the netflix engineering manager was hey we at evernote are trying to implement this tool that you guys have at netflix right That's very clear, concise, would love to pick your brain on how you guys implemented it, right?

So that right there, it's admiration, flattery. He's bringing it. He's going to mention something on the LinkedIn profile that they posted. Then he's going to specific ask, right? Those are the two biggest things, right? Most people message people on LinkedIn and they're very long. That's another thing. Be clear, concise, three to five sentences. Probably wouldn't even get five sentences. I'd probably do three sentences. People just don't read. They just don't. People, I've, I've, PLDR'd my own emails before, right? So keep it short, keep it concise, ask for something too, right? So admiration, flattery, go for the ask, be specific in the ask and what you want.

Do you want a call? Do you want an email back and forth? Like what do you want out of it is incredibly important. All right, let me get to a few more comments here. Angie, yes. Angie gets a lot of DMs, I would imagine. So she's a great resource here. As someone who receives a lot of candidates, sending me generic notes regularly, I love when someone has sent me something more personalized. It shows they have looked at my profile. Yes, yes, yes, this is it. Angie, thank you. Also, great headshot, Angie. Let's see here. What else? Let's see here. I'm kind of going through the comments here.

I do that from Gianni. I do that. I send DMs to some people, but I need a job now. How does this benefit me in the short term? Nothing you do outside of applying for jobs specifically is going to help you immediately. Let me say that again. if you are actively in a job search right mode right now nothing's going to help you immediately outside of applying for jobs however the job search time frame is a long time frame right i mean it can be for some it's short for i would say on average i'm seeing i'm seeing around nine months of the job search right so for me i say this time and time again there are four ways four ways to basically build your job search out, right?

The first is open up, literally open up your phone, your contact list and start going through it. It's going to take some time depending on how much, how many contacts you have like me, but I would literally start to reach out to people through your phone. This right here, you know, some, somebody told me the other day and Angie, I don't know if you're still on the call. You'll, you'll, you'll kind of laugh at this. Somebody told me the other day, they're like, Taylor, I feel like this is sales. Everything I'm teaching you is what I taught my sale team. The small team I ran at makeup, right?

This is sales. Your job search is you are the product. So you have to sell yourself. Right. So you have to get in front of people. The people in your phone book, the phone book. I don't know. Last time I opened up a phone book. People in your contact list are the most warm contacts you have. Start here. Start here. The second thing I would say is then apply to jobs. But remember, we've talked about this in my past streams. Do not apply to generic postings on LinkedIn. Find the job opening on LinkedIn. We'll probably talk about this tomorrow because we're technically already at time.

Time flies. But this is a lot of information. Find the job on LinkedIn, go to the company page and apply to the company page. So that's the second thing called apply. Third is like be involved in community, right? Get in the Torque Discord, get in multiple discords. If you're a designer, get in designer slacks or discords, right? That's incredibly important. And the fourth thing is DMing people on LinkedIn, right? Incredibly important. Using LinkedIn, commenting, liking, DMing. Again, you don't build a house with just a screwdriver. right i'm not a handy person but i i i barely know what a hammer is but i but i do know that you can't build a house with just a screwdriver right so you have to use all of them so gianni what so the things i'm telling you now is you need to do on day one as well as apply to jobs right it's it's all of it it's all of it um let's see here what else is it uh let's see here see here i have uh uh demetrius i have a lot over five hundred connections I have my LinkedIn profile since the days of my prior career in real estate.

I have many contacts from trying to network in that issue. Should I now audit my friend list and delete people? No, no, that's just, just leave them. Just leave them. The time you spend doing that is time that you could be doing more outreach. Don't worry about that. Add a note to connect has a max limit. So that's a plus. Doesn't mean you need it though. Yeah, yeah, absolutely. Be short, be consistent, be concise. It can be tough hearing from folks that can't help. It can be tougher and folks aren't replying at all. Don't take it personally. Yes, listen, most people don't reply. But again, you have to consistently fine tune your DMs to try to get a response.

But again, if you are, like for Chris, right? So Chris helps run DevOps Days in Atlanta, right? So if you do a little research, right? I'd be like, hey, Chris, saw you run DevOps Days in Atlanta. I'm a huge DevOps guy, right? I'm looking for a job right now. Would love to pick your brain on what do you think I should do? right again incredibly important um let's see here yeah yes i feel like i'm on one right now jill of course i wouldn't delete just that yeah a hundred percent all right uh what else let so uh this is so tomorrow i'm going over how to find a job on linkedin today was just networking i i again i i do want to go here right so um so again if so so if so go to ben's post right so I would comment here, but I think it's curious too.

You'd be like, all right, Rakesh liked Ben posts. So Rakesh may know Ben. So let me go to Rakesh, right? So Rakesh is a director of enterprise architecture, right? Oh, and he's at Curantis, which Ben was formerly at. So you can message Rakesh and be like, hey, Rakesh, I saw you liked Ben's post on Kubernetes. You know, would love to chat with you about Kubernetes. I'm a huge fan. Right. Again, that could go well. Right. And now he may not respond, which is totally fine. Again. Right. So. So, Julia, here, I know, Julia, Angela and our torque and like the post, if I did not know Ang.

Right. I could go to Ang's profile and see what he's up to. Right. Like, like, look at this stuff and and and and really like you always want to message people. with like that warm lead, right? Most people will not respond back to you if you just cold DM somebody with like no sort of common connection, right? So whether it's a college, a bootcamp, a similar connection, a passion about the same technology, something, right? You have to do something. You have to message them and reference something, right? That is the way to really cut through the noise. So for example, if you are a salesperson Looking for a sales job.

Angie heads up sales for, you know, Ronstadt, North America. I would message Angie and be like, hey, Angie, I saw you on Guidance Counselor today. I saw where you head up sales. Would love to chat with you about sales tactics. I'm sure Angie will most likely get back to you because you have taken notice on what she's involved in. Yeah, big, big fan, Jason. All right. What else? We talked about DMs. again liking and commenting goes a long way i i also do want to i do want to showcase something real quick again right so um i'm trying to go to a like and comment all right well how about let's just go back to rakesh here right with ben right so rakesh he liked ben's post and commented which which name do you see more of do you see rakesh or do you see ben i see rakesh i see rakesh right Like LinkedIn incentivizes you to engage with people, right?

Because it's all about name. It's all about brand. It's all about top of mind, right? So if you are somebody who wants to be known for Kubernetes and you consistently engage with individuals who post about Kubernetes, The algorithm and the way social media works is that you're going to get fed more Kubernetes, but then also the Kubernetes people are going to see you more. Right. Again, being known for something. Whenever people hire, they're like, hey, we need a back end database guy. Who should we hire? The first guy that pops into my brain because he put up so much content on database stuff. It's Aaron Francis.

Right. So I'm probably going to go to Aaron Francis. Hey, Aaron. And obviously you do your video thing. probably not looking for a job, but who do you know? Right? Again, you need to be known as like the Kubernetes guy or the react girl or the design. So design systems, right? Dan mall, right? With design systems, he posts about design systems all the time. Again, it's being known for something, your job search, which cuts through the noise. All right. So again, to recap, if any questions, please ask them as we wrap up here, um, to recap, to use LinkedIn, to network, you mainly use it by three, three ways.

Posting, liking and commenting people's posts, and tactful DMs. Those are the most important ways to use LinkedIn. When you message somebody on LinkedIn, always make sure you add a note. Make sure it's customized. Make sure it's around three sentences, admiration, flattery, specific ask, and move on. I will tell you this, and Angie, I don't know if you're still on, but I believe that most recruiters' DM responses are only twenty five percent. Right? So like the people whose job it is to cold DM people, their responses are only twenty five percent. Right. So don't think you're going to get a ton of DMs back. This is a little bit of a volume play.

But again, the more specific you can be and the more tactical you can be, the better opportunity response rates are. My response rate at Veiko when I was a hands on recruiter or over fifty percent. Why? Because I took time and my messages were well crafted. Right. So again, Incredibly important. Finally, leverage. um oh oh another thing another thing i want i want to share too real quick so is again go to somebody's profile before you mess with them and just see like their passions right so like here so like it's like if you go down here right south carolina um you can see you know i was vpa.net user group user group you know some some of the people i follow some of the groups i follow right and so literally like use this to your advantage a lot of people have these built out a lot more than i have But like, you know, you can mess with me like, Hey, I see you follow Chris do like, uh, give me your thoughts on him.

What are your thoughts? Right. Or, Hey, I see where you follow Lucas. Like, and I'll tell you, yeah, I actually introduced Lucas at render ATL. Right. Again, you always want to make sure when you're DMing somebody, you tie something together on their profile or post to help cut through the noise. All right. I think that's it for today. I think that's it. Um, y'all have a good one tomorrow. Nine thirty a.m. Central. We are going to specifically go over how to find a job on LinkedIn. That's a whole other thing. We're going to we're going to search jobs. We're going to figure out how to talk to people who posted jobs.

So that's tomorrow morning at nine thirty a.m. Central. If you like this episode, feel free to share it. If somebody in your network needs to hear this, which most do, feel free to share it. Otherwise, thank you so much. I appreciate you all. And we'll see on the tour discord and we'll see all tomorrow. Peace.