LinkedIn Tips for Your Clinical Sales Career opportunity Search

What is LinkedIn?

LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals in the business world.  It allows people to interact with other professionals in their industry and maintain a profile that contains career-oriented information. Other career opportunity databases and networking sites can be expensive or hard to navigate. LinkedIn is no charge for most and very specific to the business world.  This is the place to toot your own horn about your skills, abilities, and career goals.

Why it’s so valuable?

As of October 15, 2009, LinkedIn hit a new milestone with over 50 million professionals now a part of this ever-growing database (as reported by the CEO of the company). This large number should get your attention.  80% of employers and recruiters use this database to prospect for new candidates because it is perhaps the easiest and most cost-effective tool employers and recruiters have ever had available to Them.  There is a strong chance that your next employer, recruiter, client, or business partner is already on LinkedIn.  So all you’ve to do is leverage LinkedIn to begin that relationship.

How does it work?

LinkedIn provides a profile format that the position seeker completes. The profile details past employment, interests, specialty skills and experiences and allows you to include a profile photo.  [Tip: Be sure to use a professional (business-appropriate) headshot photo for this, although it doesn’t have to taken by a professional photographer.] Your profile can provide an employer or recruiter with a wealth of information before they ever speak to you.  You can even reach out to those you’ve worked with in the past to get a recommendation about the quality of your work that will be displayed on your profile. These testimonials reinforce the details that are listed as well as help build trust about your work ethic—making them one of the most powerful aspects of your LinkedIn profile.  One of the most precious features of LinkedIn is its ability to show those recommendations, which allows hiring managers and human resources as well as recruiters to see if a potential employee is worth hiring.  [Tip: You get to choose what recommendations you show on your profile.  If the ones you have aren’t strong enough or persuasive enough about you as a great employee, don’t use 'em.] 

What can it do for me?

LinkedIn is not just a networking site—it’s a resource center.  Once you’ve your profile set up you can start checking out the different areas of LinkedIn and learn how you might use Them in your job search.

• You can use the “Companies” section (top of the page) to find companies in your particular industry, along with an heavy amount of information about them—such as current employees, former employees, market size, location, website address, media age, jobs they have posted on LinkedIn, and stock information. Remember—candidates who get the job offer usually have done more research into the company and the position than other candidates.  [Tip:  Some candidates contact former employees of a company they're interviewing with to get an “insider” perspective as to what it was like to work there—that’s glamorous strong research, right?]
• You can use the “Jobs” section (top of the page) to view jobs that have been posted directly on LinkedIn.  If you use the “Advanced job search” you can see LinkedIn career opportunity postings and web job postings.  The web career opportunity posting is an aggregation of all career opportunities on “the web”.  [Tip:  Remember to check out the job posting areas of the Groups that you join. These postings don’t cost the members (like the ones that are in the “Jobs” section) and they can represent great jobs that have just come open or available.]
• You can use the “Answers” section (leading of the page) to view questions that have been posted over the last few years and the answers that were given to see what advice everyone has for the topic that you’re interested in at this time.
• You can join the Groups that are relevant to you and your interests. These Groups can be industry specific, product specific, function specific, college alumni specific, or company alumni gathering spots.  For example: if you search in the search Groups area for “sales rep,” you will see that the Groups you find are specifically for sales folks and will probably have a lot of great discussions, news bits, and career opportunity postings.
• You can use the “People” section (big of the page) to search for people that you want to “connect” with on LinkedIn.  You should think about co-workers, clients, service providers, mentors, and other relevant contacts (both at present and in the past).  Send them an invitation to connect.  If they accept your invitation you will be able to see their profile as well as what people they are connected to in the network. [Tip: If someone invites you to connect that you don’t know or don’t wanna connect to, just hit the “Archive” button.]

So, what should you do now?

Develop a selling profile for you!  Think of it like an online resume (only not).  With the way the economy is right now, the got to sell yourself well is even more important—you are competing with more people.  You have to be both confident and competent to achieve maximum success.  [Tip: Someone viewing your profile should be able to look at your resume and what type of positions you would be interested in pursuing.]

It’s extremely important that you’ve a LinkedIn profile, and that you put as much thought and effort into it as you did when you created your RESUME. Your profile will be the first impression of you for hundreds of people.  Make sure that your objective or interest is clear, that the profile is neat, checked for spelling and grammar and as complete as possible.  The more time and effort you put into LinkedIn, the greater the payoff will be for you!  I promise.  Check out this LinkedIn Profile Tutorial for jobseekers.

[One last tip: Just like every other online network, what you say and do on LinkedIn will be available for others to see for a long time (this means comments on negotiations or news articles, queries and answers, job posting comments and other areas). Make sure that you're thoughtful about your remarks and apply the golden rule when judging others.]

Article courtesy of  Peggy McKee - Owner / Senior Recruiter at the nationally
recognized medical and laboratory sales recruiting team of PHC Consulting.
© Copyright 2008 PHC Consulting | All rights reserved

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LinkedIn Tips for Your Medical Sales Job Search