Sometimes Lunch With an Old Friend is Really a Job Interview
Don’t count those weak ties out too early- they just may get you a job. LinkedIn is an entire business founded on the idea that weak ties can get you far in the world. Since it launched in 2003, LinkedIn has been helping people create and maintain weak ties for professional networking. It’s become so popular that they often write up tips for new users on how to reach the maximum amount of people, or in other words, how to create the most possible weak ties. This article (and slideshow) offers a few such tidbits. It offers obvious tips, like “put a face to the name,” or have a professionally shot photo as your profile picture. People want to have a good first impression of you, and a good profile photo is a big step in that direction. It also recommends you join and contribute to groups on LinkedIn. Joining a group is a great way to establish a whole bunch of weak ties at once – you automatically have one with all the other people in the group. Not to mention the fact that active contributors to large groups are likely to get noticed by a lot of people in the group, and making yourself stand out above the rest is essential in the highly-competitive job market. They also offer the interesting bit of advice that you should “leverage your colleagues.” Most people focus on only themselves and their own profile, but a colleague’s profile that mentions you or your company can help get your name out there even more than only your own profile. The final bit of advice they give is to constantly refine your profile- to tweak and change it often so that people know exactly what you’re all about. If a business, person, or organization reads your LinkedIn profile and decides you’re worth following, well, there’s another weak tie for you, and maybe just a future career opportunity. Creating a good LinkedIn profile will net you a plethora of weak ties, and as Ch. 3 of the textbook explains, weak ties are the source of most job opportunities.
Even if someone is a weak tie, it doesn’t mean they can’t dramatically affect your life. In fact, I’ve felt the strength of a weak tie more profoundly than most. Several months ago, my father received a message on LinkedIn from an old colleague of his, say his name is Mark, a man he had not worked with since the 90s. Mark said that he would be in New York City for a few days, and invited my father to lunch to catch up. When my father got to the lunch meeting, he was surprised to see not one, but two men waiting for him, one of whom turned out to be Mark’s boss. Introductions were quickly made, and lunch was had. To my father, it seemed like a routine lunch, eating and chatting in the gap between the first and second half of his workday, the conversation not really focused on matters of business at all. However, at the end of lunch, Mark’s boss announced that my father had done a great job at the interview, and promptly offered him a job. My father was floored. He wasn’t expecting anything to come from this lunch – just a reunion with an old friend from work and nothing more. It hadn’t even seemed like an interview. When he said he wasn’t aware that it was an interview, Mark said “I remember how well you did your job when we both worked for [name redacted]. I wanted to catch up with you, and at the same time show my boss how well I thought you’d fit in at our company.” As it turns out, the job offer was far and away better than my dad’s current job, so he accepted within a matter of days. The only catch was, my family had to move from Long Island to Texas. My dad decided it was worth it, and after all was said and done we moved down south. All because a man my dad worked with twenty plus years ago wanted to catch up. If a weak tie can move my family halfway across the country, imagine what it could do for you. Don’t let the name fool you – a weak tie can have a strong pull.
http://blog.linkedin.com/2013/09/05/20-tips-to-amplify-your-brand-on-linkedin-slideshow/