 I'm going to fix my screen up so I can see the people I need to see. And thanks a lot for coming. I'm going to share my screen. Make sure that you're able to see that. LinkedIn beyond the profile. So if someone can give me a thumbs up to let me know that you can see the slide set. Got it. Thank you. Thank you, Lori. It's small though, David. Is it? Okay. A couple of things around. Thank you for letting me know. Let me, uh, a couple of things. And I'm going to stop sharing for a moment. One other thing that I need to move. Let me share my screen again and make sure that you're going to see the right version. Okay. So I'll ask again, Lori. Someone could give me a thumbs up that you can see the. The slide. LinkedIn beyond the profile. Great. And hopefully it's larger for you now. Um, I don't have this in presentation mode only because I'm going to be swapping back and forth to show you live what goes on in LinkedIn. So let me, uh, let me get started. Um, again, thank you. I am, uh, David Robbins. Um, I've been working at, uh, I've been working at JVS to vocational service for over 11 years. I'm now the senior instructor for the job search accelerator program, which I'll tell you about in just a minute. Um, JVS has been around for over 40 years and our whole value system, our whole purpose is to help build people, help people build their in-demand skills, make connections, build a career in the Bay Area. Um, we've been around for over 40 years. We provide free job training services for unemployed, underemployed people, uh, to build those in-demand skills. We're funded by government and private donations and corporate donations. Um, we are a completely non-sectarian organization, even though the J stands for Jewish. Um, that's the way it was founded, uh, over 40 years ago for a particular immigrant population, but it has always been non-sectarian. And so we've, we've helped people to continue to support us. We've helped everyone and we're, we're very invested in DEI and moving through those communities as best we can. We're headquartered in San Francisco and some programs are offered around the Bay right now. Our offices like the library, our offices are closed and we, um, we're doing everything right now over Zoom or other virtual environments. So I just wanted to let you know what, what we offer. offer. Some of them are skills based in healthcare, technology, utilities, and you'll be getting this slide set after the program so you'll be able to look at this in more detail. I represent actually the Job Search Accelerator Program. These other programs are actually based on particular industries, but the Job Search Accelerator Program is what we call industry diagnostic. It's not based on any particular industry. We have people who attend and have been attending. We've been delivering this program for a few years now. We have people who are in all different industries and looking for their particular a job, their ideal position. We also offer public workshops, also free to the public. We have a high school program and we have career coach services. We have only one service that's paid for service and that is to meet with our primary career coach. The Job Search Accelerator Program is, as I said, industry agnostic, but what we offer there, Job Search Essential Training, it's a two week program. What you're going to do is actually grow with a group of peers and you're going to build a cohort and then we offer career coaching after graduation. We have mock interview, resume review, cover letter and networking skills and we continue teaching weekly in different organizational environments and we also offer career advising that are free to those that graduate the program. Right now applications are open and there's information on this link. We also have the public workshops and here are some of the titles of what we offer in public workshops. We do have a LinkedIn beginner and LinkedIn advanced. Then things that we need to do in terms of where we're all invested in this staying safe with COVID, interviewing via Zoom and you could also chat with a career coach and reboot your resume. So again, in facial workshops, there's a link there that you can get to later. But I don't want to take any more time about JVS. Let's talk about why you're here and that is LinkedIn and the reason it's called Beyond the Profile is that I've already offered a program here at the library on the profile and just focused on optimizing that profile, which is a very important part of networking, a very important part of using LinkedIn, a very important for you to have yourself out there so that recruiters can find you. But that takes up a whole session just to talk about the profile. So this is Beyond the Profile. So we will not talk about how to optimize the profile and if you have questions about the profile, hang on to them for another workshop or come to the JVS workshop on LinkedIn. But I really want to get to a couple of other things that are real important. We're going to focus instead of on the profile, we're going to focus on these two items, networking and job search. LinkedIn was designed not as a job search application, it was designed as a networking application and it still is a premier networking application. So since it's a networking application, we teach it for job search and I think you can guess why. Networking is one of the premier skills that you want to develop in order to be successful in your job search. So we're going to talk about networking and then we're going to talk about job search, but the reason networking comes first is that the job search portion in LinkedIn has an advantage over job searching at any other of the job boards that are out there and that is that you're building a network and then you can use that in your job search. So that's where I'm going to focus when we get to that. Why is it important to talk about networking is because of this and I'm using a number of slides that come directly from LinkedIn. LinkedIn Coaches is in partnership with JVS. They said statistically from what they gather from their database and LinkedIn has over 700 million registered users in their database, 50% of hires result from a personal connection. We've actually heard that that's even closer to 80%. But definitely people who know people, who know people, that's what a network is really all about. So I want to first then talk about the networking structure within LinkedIn and this is how they built their structure and I'm sure some of you are already familiar with this, but let's make sure that people can see this. This is the beginning of the power of networking, right? So woman in the middle has made connection with three other people. You invite people to connect with you or you accept invitations from people who invite you to connect with them, but recommendation from us and also from LinkedIn is you should be connecting with people you know who know you. Some people want to go for the big numbers. I'm going to invite everybody. I find a business card on the street. I'm going to invite that person to be part of my LinkedIn network. The problem for job search is that that will not, sorry, I want to make sure my door is closed here and not disturbing others in the house. Connecting with people that you don't know will not help you in your job search. It'll give you good numbers, but that's quantity, not quality. You want quality connections. You want people who you have to know something about them so that they know something about you and I'll show you why that's important with the next couple of slides. So here by connecting with three people that this woman knows, right away she has three people in her network. Now the other thing that's important is that that first degree connection is someone you can direct message with. So anyone else in your network, I'm going to show you how that network grows, you can still only direct message with people in your first level. Now if you have a premium account, you could connect with anybody but you still don't know them. So it's just like getting an email. If you've got emails from strangers sometimes all you do is delete it. So let's talk about how important that first degree is because here's the growth. The growth model is each of the first degree connections in this initial network has two of their own first degree connections, which means for the woman in the middle, those are her second degree connections. Now she has nine people in her network. So a group of three to nine without her really doing anything. Okay. Now as I said, you could only direct message people in your first level. So hopefully you can see my cursor. I didn't make a large cursor, but if you could see my cursor, if this woman in the middle wants to talk to this gentleman here because he might be in a position that she wants to learn more about, she can't direct message to him, but she can ask this woman who's her first degree connection and send a direct message saying, will you please help me get introduced to this person? And since this is her first degree connection, she could send him a direct message. So there's where the importance of that first degree is of people that you know who know you. So they will become an ally and help you connect with others in your network. Just thinking of the numbers. If she had 30 first degree connections and each of those people had 30 first degree connections, her network now grows to 900 geometric and she may eventually have a hundred first degree connections and each of her connections has a hundred degree connections and now she has 10,000 people in her network. Now I've been on LinkedIn since 2004 and I'm a very cautious connector. I only do connect with people I know. Sometimes they're my students, sometimes they're people I met at a conference and sometimes they're people that are my colleagues. But I have about 900 connections and if each of my connections has 900 connections, you could see that we're getting into not only triple digits but we're getting into the millions of people in your network. All of them reachable through that first level, that first degree connection. So after the second degree you do have being tracked by LinkedIn a third degree. So these are again people who might be able to help you in your job search but again you're going to go through your first level connection who's going to help you with that second degree which is going to then connect you to that third degree. So that's where the structure of LinkedIn becomes really important to understand as we then go through what is networking with LinkedIn. So you've developed the network. What can you do with that network? I think that's going to be the real important thing particularly when we talk about our job search. So you're looking to your network to connect with opportunity. Now you don't need LinkedIn to build a network but the days of the Rolodex are gone. All those spreadsheets you can keep a whole list of contacts but here LinkedIn keeps it for you and also makes it easy for people in your network to communicate with one another. So you have the opportunity to message connections asking for assistance asking for help asking for information and then from there you can ask for informational interviews. We'll talk more about that with a slide later on but informational interviews I consider to be the gold standard of job search where you can talk to somebody in one of your target companies in a particular position that you're interested in to learn more about what is it to be that person and for those of you that are not sure of what your next job role is going to be because you're still thinking about different industries and different jobs informational interview is a great way to talk to somebody in the field that you're thinking about learn more about it to then decide that I'm not interested in that field or oh this is perfect for me and this is what happened to me I was with a Hewlett Packard for 16 years and when I was laid off I figured what am I going to do next and I went through informational interviewing kind of tasting different fields through an informational interview and and found that the number of the things I was looking at were not really for me they looked fantastic I would not live within those in those parameters so informational interview becomes real important you can also request referrals if you're applying to a particular job we'll have another slide just on referrals you can ask people for recommendations because different again than other job boards in LinkedIn you can actually have in your profile recommendations from people who know you you again recommendations don't go on on resumes anymore so they can appear in your profile because of your networking for those of you that are new to a particular industry there might be mentors available you can look for that inside LinkedIn but the whole idea of using your LinkedIn network to connect to opportunity you can always add value and engage and talk to people now how do you expand your network I mean I showed you the structural method but you also have to do it as human to human and it's not as easy as saying connect with me because they don't know who you are why should they connect with you so the first thing is who do you reach out to so you want to reach out to people that you have something in common with people who have a job or work at a company that interests you if you're starting to build a job recommendation is building a list of target companies look for people who are in that company and try to connect with those people also people who might be able to connect you to somebody else because they've been in that field or used to be in that field and you'll find that out just looking at their profile looking at their job history so those are the ways to expand your network strategically but what do you say to these people well you have to you have to explain who you are and where you found their profile in LinkedIn and possibly if you could drop a name of someone they're connected to that always helps you get through that barrier of who's this stranger and then telling them how that can help you and I'm going to be very clear in networking the thing to avoid is asking someone who you really don't know well for a job that's not their role unless they're in HR in which case they're going to tell you to file an application send in a resume but in networking you want to ask for advice you want to ask for references other people to talk to you want to talk about the job you might be pursuing but don't expect them to come to your aid because they are networking with you networking is how to get information but I have to tell you that later on and again we'll talk about this as we continue later on they may remember you to call you because now they have an opening that they know of so we have here and I know it's real small I'll actually read it to you so this is the kind of information if you're going to ask someone to connect with you this might be an example of a way to do it so she's writing here hi Dan I found your profile through our mutual connection Rob so right away she's name dropping someone that Dan knows I'm currently exploring career paths in the technology industry and I admire your experience I'd love to join your network so that's a way to introduce yourself to somebody while you're asking them to connect and when we look at a couple of other screens later I'll show you live how to make sure that you're going to add this note when you're inviting someone to connect with you or asking someone to provide you with an informational interview so there's the example message the other thing that you're going to find in LinkedIn is at the top in the navigation bar there's a little piece there that says my network and if you click my network it'll take you to people you already know and yes LinkedIn knows some people you already know because you either came from the same school or you came from the same company current and former colleagues current and former managers so you're going to get to see these people and you notice even in this kind of blurry small picture this idea of connect what I want to do is I'm going to go live into my LinkedIn and show you a little more about how this should work and how you can use this to network okay so going to the my network doesn't really take you directly to my network so let me let me go into my LinkedIn and again I just need someone to let me know is my LinkedIn page up now instead of the slide yes it is David great thank you Mia so here I'm in my home page I'm going to go to my network and when I do I don't see my network right away but I do see people who have been inviting me to join their network so I have these invitations and I have a I have 25 invitations that are outstanding again I have to look at these people first Gina and Rin are both former students of mine, Parker I don't really know so I'll look at his profile and see if there's a reason that he's asking me to connect with him some people will say yeah but look he's a learning designer innovator advisor you should connect with him but I don't really know how he's going to help me or I can help him so before I connect I always check that out but let me scroll down online events that are listed here and here are people you may know so people I may know from my organization JVS and you know the interesting I do might know some of them and here are more people I may know and then if I continue down people I may know from University of Phoenix because LinkedIn knows the algorithm knows I went to the University of Phoenix that's where I got my degree I don't really know anybody who also went there it was a long time ago but you could see all these people now let's say for example I was looking for someone I had seen before but I can use M M is working at JVS right now and we're not connected so I would like to connect with her if I click the connect button and this is an important distinction if I click the connect button she will get a message right away saying David Robbins would like to connect with you not a great way to invite someone to connect so a better way to do this is if I'm interested in M Hyatt I want to make sure it's the person I'm thinking of so I click on her name or her face that takes me to her profile I see yep this is the M that I'm thinking of of and I would like to invite her to connect with me now if I click the connect button from her profile I have the option of adding a note and this is how you personalize all your invitations so that you make sure that people you know who know you that they're connecting with you and they might actually be an ally so I'll add a note this is live I am sorry we haven't been connected let's fix that now I also hope one day we are all in the office to meet face to face I've never met him I've also never met my boss my new boss so so now I've I've actually created a a little bit of a of a note to say that we are sympatico where we should be connected so hi I'm sorry we haven't been connected let's fix that now I also hope one day we'll we are all in the office to meet face to face I put my name here even though she's going to get my name in my photo when she gets this I'm going to send it you have 300 characters to write a message stay concise because you don't want someone to have to read read read read read but stay concise make your point and and you get there so that's the way that you would use that prior page in the my network you'll be able to see people here who you might know and then invite them to connect not through this button but going to their profile and then send a message now the other thing I think that's important here is that you might want to see your own network so where where's your net says this is my network where's your network well here on the left you have connections so these are my connections so I'm going to click on this and now I have all of my connections I have as you saw 960 something I can I have this sorted by people who are recently added so these are the people these are actually a few of my students are a co-worker a former student from a while ago so a number of people who I've already connected with and you notice I can direct message any of these people the other thing that's nice about this is that you can search for someone by name someone who is not I mean I would have to scroll down really far to find someone I'm looking for I could also reorder this by first name or last name or I could just search by somebody's name so I might be looking for that so just as putting it in there there's a net so I don't have to look down we actually connected a long time ago and now I could send a net a direct message I can also search through this with filters and again this is all important for networking but the filters are up here at the top here are my first level connections I might be looking at somebody who used to work at HP or Hewlett Packard Enterprise since the company split into two and then I want to connect with people or at least send a message to people that I haven't seen in a long time I left in 2005 but I want to build keep continue to build that network so I now have these people and each one I can send a message to this is great around the holidays I will usually look at the people that I used to know at HP I've actually sent something to Anka because I noticed it was her anniversary her work anniversary some of these people haven't seen in a very long time but they'll get a message from me that says thinking of you at the holidays happy holidays have a good new year that little bit helps keep me top of mind with my network so this is the way that you would actually use your network to communicate with the people you need to communicate with okay I'm going to go back into my homepage just leave it there and let's go back into the slide set and that's this slide but remember at least some notes for this make sure that you're going to not click that connect button and send a robotic message to people unless they know you really well I mean if it's a first cousin I send the robotic message that's okay but if it's anyone else you want to at least put that note in there okay you can also look for new connections so that's the people that linked in the algorithm found for people you may know but there are others that you might be looking for you know their name you met them in a conference how you're going to find them well there's always the search bar and you can always search by a first level you well you know the people in first level you already know them so you can search by second level you can search by current company and now it's going to go out into the database and look for people that meet this so use the search bar at the top navigation to find new connections by name company location keyword however you want to find other people and you want to make sure that you're searching on people if you put in a keyword you'll get you'll get jobs you'll get companies and you'll get people you can actually select people and only look for people and again this is what I said we were going to show informational interviews again I consider this to be the gold standard of job search it's great to use a warm introduction to meet someone for and ask them for their time you're asking them for 15 to 20 minutes over their time it's important to to let them know who you are you might also let them know why you're asking and again anything other than help me find a job right I'm asking for more information so there's an example here in the slide this is Aaron and Kate is sending this hi Aaron I'm currently exploring careers and communications and I admire your experience and accomplishments in the industry I'd appreciate the opportunity to hear about your career journey would you be available for a 20 minute chat over the phone or in person in the next few weeks I look forward to hearing from you so this is a way that you can send a message to somebody directly who you don't know but you want to get that informational interview now how did you direct message them well again it could be that you were introduced through one of your first degree connections it could be that you're sending this also as part of your message when you're asking to connect with them so you can actually put your informational interview message right into your invitation to connect so the purpose of that informational interview gain advice about your career path learn about an industry that you might be interested in well you're not sure learn about a specific company that might be on your target company list and you're going to build some kind of professional connection with that person after an informational interview then the professionals might also consider you for a future job openings that they learn so they'll usually ask you something about yourself right tell me about yourself and if you were working on preparing for interviews that's always something you should prepare in advance but uh even an elevator pitch but something to let them know about yourself and about your skills I personally do not bring if we're doing this face to face I do not bring resumes if they say well do you have a resume for me I always say let me send it to you because that way I can always customize that resume and then email the resume to them now the other thing you can do in your network is request referrals so asking a job referral by reaching out to your connections and companies that you want to apply to you want to let them know why you're interested in a particular role and your appreciation for their consideration um so let me read this one I know it's a little longer but bear with me so here Kate is sending this out to Seth who is a program manager in fixed def communications hi Seth I hope you're doing well I saw that fixedx is hiring a communication specialist I'm very interested in applying this role seems a great fit for me because it needs a self-starter who can operate within a complex environment would you be willing to share the information on the position the team and what they might be looking for in a candidate I'd be greatly appreciative let me know if you have any questions about my experience as it relates to this role all the best Kate so here she's not asking Seth to get her the job she's not asking for anything more than can you give me more information about this position that I'm already applying to now why is this important to know and that is that many companies release information about job openings to staff first I mean we do that at LinkedIn so we have an opening for a director position the staff gets to hear about the opening we get to see the job description so that somebody can apply internally and then when it goes external we're free to actually share that out with our network now why would I want to share that out with our network because if I can bring somebody in that's a good fit for that position I'll get a bonus and that happens with so many companies where it says here more than 60 of the workforce at the bottom more than 60 of the workforce has referred someone to work at their company and many of those companies get a bonus and for the really large consulting firms that bonus could be $10,000 by bringing in because it helps them avoid a really blanket job search and going through so many candidates if they can get someone in the company to vet the candidate themselves very helpful so this is again where the network can work for you they can either reach out to you or you can reach out to someone in your network to get more information and and even if you're really close with that person saying I've already applied to this position but I wonder if you could hand carry my resume to the hiring manager so when you have a really good relationship and that's why you want those first degree connections to be people you know who know you that's going to enhance your networking a hundredfold okay um I'm going to stop here and I'm going to take some questions on on networking so let's let's stay focused on networking for now and then we're going to talk about job searching a little bit but if there are any questions that came in in the chat lori or christie or someone can tell me what people have yes David there's a question from when a question is should the connections be exclusively or primarily people with whom you have a professional connection that is it's not a good idea to list your friends and your linked in network really good question I have to tell you my wife and I use it the hairdresser we both use the same haircut or hairdresser stylist for over 35 years she's one of my linkedin connections now why would I have someone who works in a salon as one of my linkedin connections well because she talks to so many different people every day right all of her clients and if one of her clients is sitting there getting their hair washed saying yeah we just lost our primary trainer uh you know really I'm gonna have to go through this whole job search and then Reagan can say oh you're looking for a trainer I have a client David who is a trainer par excellence can I put you two together so I have my dentist I have my haircutter I do have my cousins and I do have really close friends but again some of my friends I ask them first I say hey are you using linkedin if they're not using linkedin there's no reason to even bother or encourage them to sign up for linkedin because they're not going to use it but people who are using it it doesn't have to be someone who's in your profession because that person might have been in your profession before or they may be also trying to get into your profession now or in the future so I I actually go broader but still people I know who know me okay another question yes a question for me I'm a freelancer how should I create my own linkedin profile and use it okay so we're not going to talk about profile right but you can put your profile together and call yourself a freelancer and again as a freelancer you really want to build a network so if we focus on networking you still want to do all the things that we've been talking about you know build your profile and if you need help with that there are other classes for that but build your profile missed on your profile all your experience but then start building your network because the network is going to be how you operate to get that next freelance position or how one of your former clients is going to reach out to you because they're going to see you on linkedin and may then invite you back again so definitely have have a profile but all the things we talked about with networking go for freelancers contractors self-employed all of those things are the same the network is still gold okay another question another question a question from Shayla I have a hyphen career in two different feuds I don't know how to describe both in my profile okay I know that profile is going to keep coming up there is a way to do that and again I think there are lots of classes on how to build that profile but if we're going to talk about profile we can talk another hour just on how to optimize your profile but you can have your profile can say that you are a librarian and landscape architect okay and if you have both of those down they're two different keywords if someone's looking for a landscape architect they'll be able to find you by searching on that keyword and if you're looking for a librarian they'll be able to find you on that keyword and then you want to make sure that you're identifying your your transferable skills the skills that relate to both careers I have a question about the referral slide that you just showed it said that the guy said I'm interested in applying it didn't say that he'd already applied and so I was wondering if that sounded too you know aggressive like hey give me insider scoop on how to get this job or how to even apply well and how you how you might reword that or whatever okay if if you read the message it's really not aggressive at all it's it's actually it says would you be willing to share so you know again this is just an example you have to take it from there but definitely if it said can you help me get this job can you tell me the name of the hiring manager now you're starting to kind of go over the line of asking this person to help you get the job that's not their role that's not their job so I'm real careful and I teach the same thing at at JVS I'm real careful at asking my network to help me not to get me a job that's that's my role my role is to use information and advice so that I know how to apply for the right job I have a question um hang on let me let me ask first are there other questions that came up earlier in in the chat let's get those and then I'll take yours in or yeah there's a question from Eve how do you reach out to a contact you haven't spoken with in like 15 years do you apologize what if it's about a job how do you make them not feel like you're using them well again don't ask them for the job right but nothing wrong with saying uh my goodness um uh well you saw me write something to M saying I can't believe we're not connected yet so you know someone you haven't talked to in in 15 years um first of all are you going to find them in LinkedIn do you have are they in your network somewhere and then the what you would write to them is I was looking at uh I'm looking at a job at ABC company and then I noticed in LinkedIn that you are at ABC company and we haven't spoken in 15 years which I have to say I'm I'm amazed that we haven't really reconnected so I'd love to uh if if you don't mind can reconnect with you now and and maybe set up some time where we can talk I would just go that far I wouldn't even ask for tell me more about the company tell me more about the job I would first build that relationship back and the way to do that is to say hey can can we connect and is there a good time for us to to um to talk and at the talk if they're interested they'll build rebuild some of that relationship with you and then you could say well you know I was thinking of applying to the ABC company is there any information you're giving about the company do you like working there things like that so um you know we sometimes feel that people we haven't talked to in a long time uh and then we want to talk to them they right away feel like what do you want from me and that could be and then you have to be careful about how you use your words um I have found that people that I haven't spoken to in a very long time are really happy to hear from me right oh yeah it's great to reconnect with you David um so you know you you haven't reached out to them you don't have to apologize because they haven't reached out to you either you're just now reaching out and even though it's 15 years I would I would take the shot you know the worst thing that can happen they don't respond okay that's it nothing lost but if you don't do anything then nothing gained so definitely reach out but again if you if you're asking them to help you get the job at ABC company then they're going oh yeah David's just trying to take advantage of me so get back to the relationship try to get that first meeting and then turn it into an informational interview okay one more from the chat and then I'll go okay okay question from Kay if someone does not respond what is the etiquette about following up on a request to connect okay it's interesting LinkedIn will actually follow up for you many times they will send like three weeks later it would say Lori is still waiting for a response to her invitation request right and then I could either ignore it or I could you know respond you can you've already sent the the connection request you can't I don't think you can I don't think you can send another connection request you could try to reach that person another way and otherwise as you as you saw people who have invited me I have 25 outstanding some of them I respond to and some of them I just go I don't really know this person I can actually hit the ignore button but if you are sending a message out to someone you don't know and they hit the ignore button and another person that you don't know also hits the ignore button and a third person that you don't know hits the ignore button because you're really spamming people now LinkedIn will suspend your account so LinkedIn is a very private service and they do not like people who are spamming so if you're going to just try to reach out to every vice president of every company in the field that you're really interested in and you're just sending them invitation requests some of them will hit yes connect but they will never talk to you if you don't really don't know them and they don't know you and they don't care but if they hit that ignore button then if multiple people hit the ignore button LinkedIn will send you a message saying we're suspending your account you can't invite anybody else to connect with you for 30 days and then if you keep doing it a LinkedIn will close your account so be careful about that LinkedIn has some really strong values about how people use their service but definitely reach out you know more than once if you need to okay in or you had a question thanks I was wondering if you're already in the interview process and you find a connection at the organization what would you recommend as a way to reach out would it be similar in terms of you know can you tell me about the organizational culture it depends on the relationship that you have with that person if it's really a stranger you know then you would just let them know I am I'm in the I'm already in the interview process but I would love to connect with you to to talk a little more about the company if it's someone you know real well that's when you could just be real really more clear and saying I'm in the interview process are there any things that you think I might be asked that that you know is is used in your company that that I need to prepare for and that again depends on the relationship you have with the person yeah it's it's it can be a little tricky because if you offend the person because they really don't know you and they think you're trying to kind of sneak in under the wire they may actually talk to the hiring manager they may they may work for the hiring manager you don't know and I'll say hey David just contacted me asking me for more information isn't he already in the in the process why does he need me so you want to be careful about how you do that but again if you know someone really well I'm sure they want to help you okay it's getting close to 11 and I wonder we want to talk about the next thing so if you bear with me hold on to those questions or keep the questions going in chat and we'll we'll have another maybe two times to take q&a I'm gonna go into my slide set again and I have something for you to do I can't be doing all the work it's not fair okay here's work for you to do we just talked about networking okay you saw how to add a note so those are the things I wanted you to see and you now have an action and that is just just paint pencils a paper and I have to tell you I'm serious about this I know some of you saying well I don't need to do this if you really want to make this work for you think of three people that might be able to help you with your job search and they notice he says a former colleague someone who works at the company I'm interested in it could be it could be a cousin right but who are some people who will help you and maybe go to bat for you and then looking at that list of three choose one person who you will reach out to and write a draft of a message what you're asked to them so the use this the slide set at the end of this program and take a look at some of the examples that are there for messaging and start doing this you don't get anywhere if you don't start doing we we like to teach a JVS adults learn by doing and then reflecting on what they did it may not work that's good reflect on it and figure out what will make it work better the next time but this is something you need to do in order to see if this is going to work for you okay so while I was talking hopefully you were doing that and I'm going to take us into one last thing that has to do with network before we get into job search and that is I wanted to introduce you to where in your LinkedIn environment your network lives right now my network shows you the the people but the homepage is where your network lives you should go every day to your homepage and see what your network might be up to and how do you do that in your homepage you have this list here which is your news feed so let me go live just to show you what this looks like and hopefully I can get back into my life okay here's my homepage okay I just clicked on it to update it because it's constantly updated and here it says Dorian Lacerda who's a first level connection of mine he actually is an entrepreneur in Brazil and we met when he came to look at some of my classes when I was teaching at an ESL school in San Francisco an international school and a number of people from Brazil came to that he wanted to find out more about it so I'm connected to him now you notice his message is in Brazilian Portuguese which I don't read and can't understand I can get a translation corporate culture is the persistence of the set of habits believes in practices continual learning continual learning is a need for organizations to evolve so he's he's posting this and I can see it I may not bother reading it because it's going to be in Portuguese but I could say just the concept there I can hit the like button and he will get a message that said David Robbins liked your now sometimes I actually send the comment saying I was able to translate your your your comment but of course I can't read the article but I appreciate the fact that you posted that into into LinkedIn and again just a humorous way to let him know that I'm still watching him so everything is in here now you do get promoted means that this is an ad right and some people have ads that are that are helpful right and every one of my first degree connections when they post something might show up in my newsfeed so here I'm keeping track of I'm keeping track of what's going on with my network and I can keep in touch with them Oscar Garcia has presented a number of times at at JVS he actually built an entire international business as a consultant and speaker all through LinkedIn and I'm gonna say I like it because I like anything that he does and then I can see other comments that people made Alejandra Villa is my former manager and I always want to share what she is posting because she is in a similar organization to JVS so she's helping young people become Salesforce administrators so I can share it out and I look at her comment here she's just sharing this from the CEO and I can share it out and I would always put something here that says climb higher is a great place to grow and then I would post it so now everyone who is looking at Nitzan's site might see my comment and anyone who is looking at Alejandra's site might see my comment and I have gotten up to 800 views of my comment not this little comment probably not but sometimes when you make a comment on somebody else's material people are looking at that and now if they're looking at your comment it means that they're thinking of you as an expert so this is again where your network lives there are videos here there are lots of things this boy he looks just like Cuban huh so this is definitely Mark Cuban's relative I'm gonna guess and he's put something in there Leah Olson against my first level and she's having some other information that she's sharing out so I wanted to point this out to you the other thing that you're gonna find here is a way sorry to move fast up and down but a way also for you to show your expertise by writing an article or finding an article in your field that you want to share with people in your network and then you can start a post and in that post you can share what do you want to talk about and you can share your article get just getting the link to that article and you could do that here and that again will then have you appear throughout your network in their news feeds so you have connections that you can do right directly in the news feed and then ways that you can start putting in information to show yourself as an expert so I really encourage you to spend time in your homepage and there's a lot of really good information in there I'm going to guess that some of you are here to know something about job search and how LinkedIn can help so I'm going to share with you a number of slides that LinkedIn has provided I think that they would be helpful so in searching for jobs you can use any kind of filters in the search bar so you can just put something right into the search bar or you can go to the jobs tab and use that direct search bar but either place you can put in keywords job titles company names location a particular function that you're looking at you can even filter out by experience level and you can filter out by date posted inside the inside the jobs tab now also inside the jobs tab when you're looking at a particular job or you're you you set up a keyword search let's say you're looking for accountant it's going to show you a number of jobs for accountant it's also going to give you the opportunity to set up a job alert and then the algorithm is going to notice that any other job that appears that is for an accountant that will send you an email and you could decide do you want that to come daily do you want that to come weekly is it emails or do you want it through a notification inside LinkedIn you get to choose how you want to use these job alerts and when we go live I'll show you where the button is to actually create that job alert but this is another way to make sure it's just like setting up an agent in in monster or set up an agent in career builders a job alert is going to pretty much do the same thing it's going to watch out for you when you go to the jobs tab you'll see jobs that are recommended to you how do they recommend the jobs well again the algorithm is looking at your profile they're looking at jobs you've looked at before they're looking at schools that you've been to and that's they're just looking at a number of different pieces to then recommend jobs that they think you might be interested in sometimes they're helpful and have to be I'll be honest sometimes they're not helpful at all they sometimes make recommendations and I go where do they get that from and I just skip over it I don't I don't try to get annoyed that LinkedIn is not personalizing everything from me they have 700 million people to take care of and I'll use whatever I can for the best of my ability so that it's going to maximize what I need so for the best recommendations make sure your profile is filled out with accurate work experience skills and location information so once again if you don't have a profile that's complete the algorithm can't help you look for jobs that you might be interested in if I don't put my experience down it can't look for similar jobs to my experience now for people who have two different career paths if they're not both in your profile then neither one of them is going to show up in their recommendations so I allow LinkedIn to help me and the way to do that is to have a complete profile so it has here jobs you might be interested in so I think at this point let's go live and let's see if I can take you through an example and hopefully it works that's always a it's always the challenge okay so I'm back here in my home page where where I like to live because that's what my network lives we talked about my network and look somebody I'm going to guess it might be someone from this class that invited me to connect with them should we check this is always fun hi David I'm in the webinar your presentation is very impressive it extends my LinkedIn knowledge network and skills well thank you YC2 I really appreciate your comment I'll get to this later and I'm going to look at your profile and I'm going to see how well you're using LinkedIn and then yeah why not that would be great if I could help you you might be able to help me too so that being said please not everyone in there now inundate me but I want to be a point out that I am impressed and and grateful that that I don't know if it's we or way but they actually used the message because that's what I'm looking for if I'm going to connect with someone tell me why you want to connect with me okay I'm going to get back out of this go back into my home page and take you where I want you to take you and that is to jobs because I know that's what some of you are looking at so here are jobs so I click on the jobs board and right away the jobs tab excuse me my jobs these are things I have saved jobs you can also see a job and you can say save it I'm gonna look at it later and that would be under my jobs job alerts that I might have set up or in here I wonder what's in here now so here are some alerts that I was looking at and I can hit done yeah we'll keep those salary just remember that LinkedIn has no special uh view of actual salaries they're going to give you again using their algorithms they're going to give you generalized salary ranges for the position that you might be applying to but don't think that if you click salary sometimes it'll say you need to be premium for this and then you pay them $30 a month to be premium to only find out that they're not really the actual salary for the position that you're interested in okay but it can help you because they have a nice algorithm that's going to help you got I it'll help give you some ideas about where things are coming from okay so there are lots of things up here click through them on your own and then you can search for your next job by a company name by a title by a particular skill area and then always put in city, state, or zip code because remember that they're international automatically it will defer to nationwide so you would want to put something in here now I live in Oakland I rarely put in Oakland I always put in San Francisco Bay Area the not not every city has a regional designation but San Francisco has a regional designation so you can put in San Francisco if you want but you can spread it out to San Francisco Bay Area and here are our job searches that I've done before and here it's giving me now some remote opportunities these are these are companies that are looking for remote workers and because I have a premium account only because I work with LinkedIn and they kind of forced me to use a premium account because they're providing it for me they're providing it with our partnership with JVS people who graduate our job search accelerator program will usually get a premium account for one year so I have jobs for you the top applicant this may only happen if you are a premium if not there's still plenty that's here like recommended for you so here are a number of other companies but I didn't really call out what I was looking for so let me let me put in here that I'm looking for career advisor San Francisco Bay Area and now it automatically took me into San Francisco Bay Area and I actually had some designations there that said I will work part-time I will work a temp I will work contract because I know that most companies hire contract or term or temp to perm so I'm looking down here to see are there any companies that I might be interested in in looking at any positions for example that I might be interested in looking at and I thought I saw one before that was something at Golden Gate University again Mike T if this is live so even though I looked at it this morning it may not be here oh here it is student advisor at Golden Gate University I might be interested in this and you notice what it's telling me right away one of my connections actually works here okay so now I have possibly an entree into getting more information about a student advisor at the school I don't know exactly what she does let's take a look I'll click on student advisor okay now it appears here on the right and it tells me that this was posted by Divya M which means that I now know who posted this so when I said when I send out my cover letter I could actually say dear Divya right or high Divya and then it's going to tell me more about the job because it's academia government jobs academia many times will put the salary range and somebody asked about using LinkedIn I noticed it in chat for academia it does it does work there are a lot of jobs where schools are are using LinkedIn to find people Golden Gate University is has a LinkedIn account so they are using LinkedIn also so yes it works for academia for certain of the arts it doesn't work quite as well musicians find that it's not really helpful as as much as it is for corporate America but biotech you know and and academia um go along with corporate America so so here I have all this information about the job but I was really interested in this right here connections I did go to Golden Gate just for one class but it's telling me that there are the all these people but I have one connection here I can click on this and find out who it is oh Heather Cohen Heather and I work together at JBS so she works as a part-time instructor there so reminding me of that I can now go to Heather she's first level and I can say hey Heather can you talk to me more about the career advisor position do you know anything about it and she says no I don't really know anything about it can you connect me with someone who might be able to tell me more about the career advisor position and now she is probably connected to more people at Golden Gate and I can then ask her to help me through this process okay again I'm not asking for her for a job I'm not asking the next person I just want to learn more about this position I may not want to apply for it I want to learn more about it so you can see how the network helps you with your job search I'm going to go back there was another one that we passed that was also interesting to me and that was at Rubicon career coach I'm a career advisor at JBS Rubicon is a program that is affiliated with the EDD employment development department and Rubicon is similar to what I do that their career coaches probably are similar so I want to learn more about this and again I have a connection who works here so I can go to learn more about this company and learn more excuse me learn more about this job and then it tells me more about some of this information is only for premium but it doesn't really help me with my job search what helps me with my job search is amabella amabella and I work together at JBS now let's see it says I'm connected to my bill but I don't remember how I know her okay well since she's first level connection I'm going to go to her profile and I'm going to get this out of the way I'm going to scroll down and it says do you want to endorse amabella for public speaking it's right away notice that we're first level connected and we have mutual connections 53 mutual connections so I know we do know each other and here it is she worked at JBS from 2013 actually from 2012 to 2014 before that she was a program coordinator so she I know her now I know I know her from JBS and now when I send her a message we have something that we can talk about okay so you see again the advantage of job search inside LinkedIn is that your network shows up when you're interested in a particular job okay hopefully that was helpful but I want to take it one more step and that is what if I'm interested in a job but I don't know anybody there we don't have mutual connection okay so let me take you through that example before we finish this up I saw a career development instructor I'm really more involved in instruction than I am in career advising although I am a career advisor and I work with my with my students as a career advisor I really like the training part I've been a trainer for over 40 years that's what I really like to do and this is a career development instructor it's contract which could work out to my benefit and it's at Lambda school in San Francisco it is remote so I can still work here in my in my home office but it doesn't say that there was anybody that I knew and it's promoted which is why I came up near the top they're paying for this to be posted I'm going to click on this and here I have more about the position it tells me about what Lambda school is about here's what I would do I would work with the graduates of their programs it's mid senior level oh that's I like that I like that position you have zero connections to this company up am I out of luck well not really because LinkedIn is a networking application so what you would do from here is I would click on the school icon and this will take me to their page so here's the Lambda school and I can then I want to know more about the school anyway so here I can find out about oh there's a retreat here's company photos I see they're they're not a very formal group I like that uh it looks like they have fun okay this is great but I really want to talk to somebody how can I do that well you notice it says here there are 899 employees from Lambda school on LinkedIn oh that's interesting let me click on that okay so I got 901 results of people that are already connected to Lambda school and here is Austin and Rachel so these are kind of key players the co-founder and CEO here's a career counselor and here's head of recruiting oh that would be an interesting person and you notice for each one of them Andra Ina Balyash is a shared connection so I'm not connected to anybody in this organization but I have connections to the people in this organization so if I want to talk to or try to get information from the head of recruiting or ask someone to help me get my name in front of the head of recruiting I can click on Daniel right and I would go through his his profile to see where we know one another again remind myself of how I know Daniel and since we're first level connected I can send him a direct message saying hey I'm really interested in Lambda school I see you're connected to the head of recruiting I wonder if it would be too much to ask if you would let her know that I'm looking for an informational interview he could ghost me or he could say you know David I don't really know her that well so I'm not comfortable doing that and I would immediately send something back saying okay thanks anyway I appreciate it I hope all is going well with you that's it I don't push and I don't I really do avoid being aggressive it's not going to help me in getting a job so this is how you can again I can go through all of this this is the future of learning geek she's interesting she's in Los Angeles and she's connected to Shari Tishman who teaches LinkedIn for this library okay I know Shari well Alex Hockman who I know actually from another group and he is in charge of the career center at SFU so you know again these are people I know who can talk help me talk to people other people that I want to know here's a recruitment project management specialist Orlando White and Jordan Medina are both people that work for LinkedIn that I'm first level connected with so I wanted to really impress upon you that learn how to use your network because it's going to help you with finding out about everything you need to or many things that you might need to to look for in your job search and I'm backing out of all of this I can just actually go back to my home screen okay I have I have just a couple more slides but it's we have we have another nine minutes before we have to end and if we have to ask more questions after we could do that too but are there any questions now about job search using LinkedIn and I'm going to go first to Lori who's been looking at the chat sure going to stop my post one thing to show you before I get that is you notice it says new posts the newsfeed is constantly being refreshed and it goes down forever so you want to just try to keep up with it and I say five minutes a day just glancing through this will help you keep up with your network five minutes twice a day will help you even more okay I'm going to stop share and take questions okay question from Amanda can you reach out to the recruiter at them directly and ask them for the informational interview if you have a premium account is appropriate you can ask they may not have any time we we have a recruiter advisory council and I ask these kinds of questions to our recruiters all the time our recruiter from Twitter it always has 300 resumes in front of him constantly so he's not going to give an informational interview so it depends on the recruiter there's nothing wrong with asking for that but would be better is for a recruiter is to just ask them if if you know if you know the recruiter and they're really a recruiter because there are people that are that are floating through LinkedIn's universe that that will contact you saying I'm a recruiter then look them up and find out who are they recruiting for are they connected to a company or are they just looking to get into your network so they can see all of your connections so you'll be careful of how you do that but there's nothing wrong with having a connection with a good recruiter so if I know that this is a recruiter from from Twitter if this is a recruiter at Salesforce I might invite them to connect with me and then it's up to them to see what they're going to do from there okay a question from Jane if I do not know anyone at lambda what is my next step uh just what I did go to their LinkedIn page for the company any company and it'll say how many people in that company are members of LinkedIn click on that and you can then look for people who are second level connections because they already said that you have no first level connections but if you have second level connections it'll tell you who your mutual connection is and that mutual connection can possibly introduce you to the person who works at lambda how about there's no second level connection I think that's probably yeah yeah if there are only third level connections you could try to look at their profile um look at that third connections profile you're not going to see very much of it because they're not really part they're kind of outside edge of your of your network um and then your best you could do is is look at their names and then google them see if there's another way for you to to send a message to them networking doesn't exist only inside LinkedIn it's really it really important to understand that networking is everything LinkedIn just has a great structure for for networking but nothing wrong with going outside when you see the person and they have a job that you're interested in at a company you're interested in look for them google them check them out nothing wrong with doing that no other question in the chat okay how would you I'm wondering how would you compare a monster and indeed in LinkedIn in terms of um how good they are as as a database of job listings I we do this periodically with our with our Tuesday program we give out we take the 10 top job search sites and and we have people go in and look at pros and cons I could just tell you that indeed very active nothing wrong with you posting your profile on Indeed it used to be that you could only search for jobs on Indeed but then they started asking you to put your profile on there and I went I put you post your resume not a profile but post your resume and I said well I don't really know about that because again recruiters from nowhere are going to try to contact you but now they they really are doing they also indeed is sending out great articles on job search so I think Indeed's great monster I stopped using a long time ago because I wasn't really getting any success with it but they do have a database and just remember that people companies that are posting on these databases are paying money for it the difference when you say monster indeed and LinkedIn LinkedIn is the same as those others except with monster and indeed it will not tell you who a mutual connection is it will not tell you who the poster was so um LinkedIn is a networking application that happened to have a job board so that's what's going to be real important Barbara okay there are other questions now Amanda asked for the case of this seminar there were LinkedIn profiles such as David's and on the email it says connect is this appropriate to connect at this time when is it being suggested okay so again um why would you want to connect with me what can I do for you okay so you should be connecting to people that you know who know you I don't know you and if you just click the connect button I'll get a message that says so and so would like to connect with you all right in this case I think it's Amanda Amanda would like to connect with you and I'll go I don't know Amanda and I will not connect with you so um follow me for a while that's another thing you can actually follow someone go to their profile hit the follow button you're not going to be connected to them but you'll see whatever they post in the in the news feed for everyone that you're following you'll see their news feed posts um and then you'll learn more about me and then you'll say hey David I saw that article that you wrote about such and such can you give me more information I'd like to connect with you that's different than uh I saw your name I saw a connect button I'm going to do it okay a question from if um when can you ask for a referral or for them to put your resume in front of the recruiter do you have to do an informational interview first if they are a connection you haven't talked to in years I would definitely do an informational interview or at least talk to them I would not go to a stranger and say can you please put I mean stranger meaning I haven't talked to them in 15 years and then put put a message saying can you please put my resume in front of this person and they're going to go David you haven't talked to me in 15 years so I said before go back and create a network with that person create a relationship so the first thing you want to do with that person is hi we haven't talked in 15 years uh I'd love to find out what you're up to is everything okay I remember that you had small kids now they're probably all grown right so you want to build a relationship and then that person would be more likely to help you with your job search but just having a whole bunch of people to connect you with you if you don't know them and they don't know you it's not going to work out to your benefit I mean it might but you know winning the lottery also works but um you want to make sure that you build a relationship with people or have already a relationship and then connect with them before we take any other questions I want to finish up the slide set so you see what else you're going to get so let me um let me go back into my slides and then I'm going to share my screen again because we're just coming up to the end of time but I don't mind staying a little longer with you okay hopefully you can see this back in my slide set um it says add value and engage with your network so invest time in your connections and request informational interviews but first is invest invest time with your connections um like and share things that you see in your homepage because then people will see oh David liked that I haven't talked to David a long time maybe they'll then reach out to me um join groups now that's the next slide I'm going to show you joining groups is another way to direct message people so kind of get around that first level connection restriction and definitely give testimonials and recommendations to other people so um people who are in your network endorse their skills and send them a recommendation they will like you more if you put a recommendation on their LinkedIn profile but it has to be real and that's the heartfelt and you know that's going to be important so the next the next slide is um uh went the wrong way hang on and that is um oh following companies um so when you go to a company website make sure that you hit follow the company the reason is down here in the lower right hand corner recruiters when they're looking at the database let's say they're looking for accountant or like I did career advisor um they're going to get tens of thousands possibly people who have that keyword in their profile so then they're going to start filtering it down and one of the filters they use is candidates who have engaged with their company page which means that you hit as it says here in Starbucks you hit the follow button and then you are following this company and that says to the recruiter that you're interested in their company because they're interested first and talk to people who are not only interested looking for a job but interested in working for their company those are the people that they want so um important to um to try to make sure that you're following the companies that could be of interest to you because that'll direct the recruiters to put you up higher on the list joining groups um you get to groups through the the the the dots that are up here in the upper right hand corner uh you click that down and you'll see groups and or you could just go into the search bar and filter for groups and look to join groups that are in your industry um not all groups are open to everyone so you can apply to a group sometimes they'll say pending and they want to see if you're really someone that belongs in their group and then requesting recommendations I put this in here because I think it's going to be helpful to a lot of people um but I have to admit I don't believe the best way to ask people for a recommendation is to do it through the mechanism of LinkedIn I think the better way to do it is pick up this little um camera that you carry around all the time in case you don't know it also has a phone connected to it right I know people think it's just a camera but it has a phone this is the way you should ask people for recommendations hi Laurie this is David um I know we haven't talked in a long time I was hoping that you could help me out I'm trying to get another recommendation on my LinkedIn profile and remember we worked on that project together um yes that's the one I hope that you'd be able to just write something about that if you thought I did a good job you're not sure what to write why don't I send you an email with kind of three bullets to help focus and then you write whatever you want but if you could do it great if you can't that's okay too but I really would be great to do that and and let's keep talking that's how you use your relationship to ask someone for a recommendation okay I'm kind of done with time I'm going to go back and do some more q and a I just want to tell you what else is here right now we are accepting people applying to join the job search accelerator program the next one the orientation is going to be May 7th and then it's going to be the next two weeks of content and a little intensive work but all about improving your job search that's why it's called job search accelerator more information about JVS is through this link and my contact information is here um so definitely if you need to have more questions um send it to my uh to my email that's okay I'll try to answer them as best I can because I do have to go back to work after this so I will now entertain any more questions that you have I know people are leaving because it's after 11 30 for those of you that have to leave thank you very much for coming I hope this was helpful I know that the library uh Leo Laurie Kirstie um they will send you the the slideset um or they'll at least send you the the video um so something will be sent to you to do the follow-up on this and um if you have to leave thank you very much if you don't have to leave I'll be willing to stay for a little while and ask answer any other questions right now okay Frank has a question um if someone sends you a connection invitation and you don't remember them is it possible and appropriate to send a message asking them to remind you how you know each other and if appropriate how do you do this okay give me that again so this is I want to get the the person that you're talking about and I posted my email address in the chat so tell me again Laurie yes someone sent I can ask it directly okay sure so David um so I get a lot of invite requests from people and I don't always know who they are whatever and looking at their profile doesn't remind me is there a way only then to message them to say hey would you remind me how we know each other so a is there a way to do it and b is it appropriate to do that it's definitely appropriate to do you know remind me how we know each other is great um if you have a premium account it's very easy to do if you don't have a premium account um you have to look at um at their their profile when you look at their profile and in the more section or the three dots everybody has a slightly different version there might be something that says send message and then you can send a message to them saying um uh I've got your invitation request but I'm not sure how we know each other can you please remind me but um however you do it Frank it's definitely appropriate and I encourage it okay a question from um Alka how do we ask for a recommendation if we don't have their phone number and what if we do not reach out to them on the phone ever like a formal connection well then then you're gonna then you can do it right in there okay so first of all the only people that can give you a recommendation are first level connections it can't be second level third level or or your your you know former sixth grade teacher right um it has to be someone who your first level connected to now if your first level connected to them instead of clicking the ask for um reference button just go to ask through message and and send a message to them saying um I wanted to talk to you and I realized I don't have your phone number um I would love to ask you if we can talk a little bit about the possibility of getting a reference on my profile now something else is going to happen when your first level connected with someone there's a when you go to their profile there's a contact button right right there on near their name um they may actually have their phone number in that contact list because nobody can see it except for first level connections anybody else when they hit contact is only going to get their their generic linked in email address so it could be that you could get their phone number that way but if you don't again if you're not that close with them send them a direct message or use the invitation link I mean it's not a bad thing to do I just think it's nicer to talk to them directly so your first level connected if they're not first level connected don't bother they can't send you a recommendation but you can ask them to connect with you and then after that ask them for recommendation okay question from Eve if you're transitioning careers and want to connect with someone in the field should you ask for the informational interview in the connection request message or wait until they connect and what is a good reason to convince them to connect with you um there there is no good reason except for whatever your real reason is uh you know again um making I'm even going to google and find out you know what a great connection request but um you know if it's something that's generic it's not going to be great but you saw it there are examples in the slide set so when you see the slide set you'll see a couple of examples but um if I'm going to ask someone connect with me that um I really don't know well I'm going to have to explain to them why I would like to connect with them right I noticed that you're working at such and such a company I've been in the field for a long time I'd love I'd love to connect with you and learn more about your your company your industry and I think it would be good for us to share information see I use the share information because it's not like I want to get stuff from you but I want to connect with you so you might be able to get stuff from me so that's kind of the way that I would word it um and then if I want to ask them at the same time for an informational interview I would put that I could put that right into the connection request right I'd love to connect with you I want to learn more about about your company um and in addition to connecting if you have 15 to 20 minutes um I'd I'd love to set up a meeting where we can we can talk a little about your I could learn more about your company so um different ways you could do that but you can definitely ask for an informational interview inside a connection request but make sure I mean the way your question was worded make sure you're you're not trying to convince them to connect with you but explain to them why you're asking them to connect with you uh last question from NR how important is it to have recommendation on your LinkedIn profile it helps uh will it eliminate you from anything no um will recruiters look at it some will some won't even get that far but here's the thing if I'm up for a job let's say I didn't even go I didn't look at a job in LinkedIn I sent my resume into a company I saw it on Monster I sent a resume into a company they like me before they're going to call me in for an interview what do you think they're going to do yes they're going to go to LinkedIn and they're going to go to your social media they're going to find out who you really are and in LinkedIn they're going to scroll through it they they learned about your experience already because they got your resume your your uh LinkedIn profile which we to talk about in our profile class um is a little different but you know there's a lot of information there they're going to look at that they're going to see your summary and they're going to scroll down and they might see hey you have 15 um references 15 recommendations wow now that that says something that says that there are people who took the time to write a recommendation for you so in that case recommendations could help now when I look at recommendations and I see somebody if I'm if I'm helping to uh get someone who applied to JVS and I look at their profile and I see 15 recommendations that they got it also says how many did they give and I see zero I now have second thoughts about this person this person's a taker right they would love people to give them recommendations and and that's great but they're not giving any recommendations back I wonder about that so when it comes to recommendations definitely ask for them um again they have to be first level connected but also give them and some people say yeah but if I get one and I give one then people think it's just quid pro quote they're not looking that far they're not looking for excuses and if you have only one to one yeah that that that becomes very obvious but if you have eight and you gave three that that says something about your your um your network got people are uh appreciative of you the same thing will happen with endorsing your skills you can list up to 50 skills on your profile and first level uh first degree connections can endorse those skills if you have only three endorsements it says okay maybe those were two cousins and a sister but if you have 65 endorsements that says to a recruiter oh this person probably really has these skills so you know this it's not a um do you need them no can they help possibly that's it okay that's all the question we have thank you hey I want to thank you um I hope my staying late would help with a couple of the questions um once again if you're interested in learning more about jvs or the job search accelerator program when you get the slide set or the program take a look at it but jvs.org simply go there and you'll find all the information you need and I did put my email address in the chat um and thank you very much and thank you san francisco public library for doing this for the community I I I love to do this because I love working with you guys um but I really love the fact that you are working to help the community in all different ways so I just want to add my appreciation to what you do and thank you very much well thank you um equally back at you david we really appreciate your expertise and your willingness to share it with the public and if that will close our program thanks to all of you who joined us today and we'll see you at the next program bye bye