Sunday, April 26, 2009

I Always Feel Like Someone is Watching Me

You know that insurance commercial with the money and the eye balls, where they play that old song "I Always Feel Like Someone is Watching Me". Sometimes being watched can be a good thing, especially in LinkedIn. Here is yet another way to find those people you should be connecting with.


The other day, I found a job lead on the Internet that I was a very good match for. I checked my LinkedIn network to see if there were any advocates within that organization. There were six Level 2's I could reach out to for intelligence gathering and possible support. The next day, I received an invitation from one of them to join their network (see below).





This person is a former executive at my target company and he reached out to me because I had viewed his profile. We had a very productive  conversation and the intelligence he shared with me about the company and it's culture was invaluable. Based on the information, I decided not to pursue the position. However, even though the position didn't turn out,  I decided I should pass on this "new" (at least new to me) networking tip.


After logging into LinkedIn go to the Home Page. On the right hand side of the page there will be a box titled "Who's viewed my profile?"

Click the "See more" link (or the words "Your profile has been viewed by...") and you will be taken to a new page displaying who has checked your profile over the last (x) day(s).




For those of us using the gratis (free) LinkedIn membership, we are limited to a certain amount of days. Those with paid membership, will be able to view more days.


If you click one of the people who has viewed your profile their profile will be opened for you to view. Check out their profile. Who knows, it might be someone you should connect with.











Any people in the list without names are those outside of your network. When you click on those individuals LinkedIn will displayed a new search list based on the criteria from the description on the previous page.


For example: If I click on the fifth link (from the above) a list of individuals within 100 miles of zip code 10021 (NYC) working in the Publishing industry with the key words engineering-information technology will be displayed..







Another bonus for all of us. Once you find someone who has been watching you, you can see who has been watching them by checking the list of names under the "Viewers of this profile also viewed..." area on the right hand side of their profile page.

Again, a possible resource for people you might want to connect with.











Let me know if you have any new (not so new) ways to grow your network using LinkedIn.


1 comment:

  1. Hi Genesius - whenever I see one of your posts on the SGGNG Yahoo Group site I jump right on it, as I know it will be interesting and valuable. This was no exception. I was aware of the list of those who viewed my profile, but never thought to click past that to find out who viewed me. When I tried that just now, I clicked on, for example, "Director at Rhodia" and got a list of 668 names to sort through! How do you figure out which person actually looked at your profile? Is it a bit of an educated guess?

    A couple of other comments / thoughts on LinkedIn:
    - I have been using the strategy to purposefully update my profile on a regular basis, as this then generates an update to all those in my network, keeping my name and profile info in front of them and maybe jogging their memories about me. But someone I spoke to recently doesn't like that idea, because he thinks it takes advantage, or even annoys the others who don't have the possibility to opt out of these updates. What do you think?
    - Have you had much experience trying to get introduced to 3rd level contacts? How does that work?
    - I'm sure you take advantage of this LinkedIn feature, but maybe others aren't aware of the keyword based job search function on the home page. I use several keywords in quotes, separated by the word OR. One cool thing about this is it indicates at which companies you already have some level of contact.

    Thanks again for sharing this great information.

    Rodger Cram

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