Republished from the brilliant Guy Kawasaki.

Searching for a job can suck if you constrain yourself to the typical tools such as online jobs boards, trade publications, CraigsList, and networking with only your close friends. In these kinds of times, you need to use all the weapons that you can, and one that many people don’t—or at least don’t use to the fullest extent, is LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has over thirty-five million members in over 140 industries. Most of them are adults, employed, and not looking to post something on your Wall or date you. Executives from all the Fortune 500 companies are on LinkedIn. Most have disclosed what they do, where they work now, and where they’ve worked in the past. Talk about a target-rich environment, and the service is free.

Here are ten tips to help use LinkedIn to find a job. If you know someone who’s looking for a job, forward them these tips along with an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. Before trying these tips, make sure you’ve filled out your profile and added at least twenty connections

1. Get the word out. Tell your network that you’re looking for a new position because a job search these days requires the “law of big numbers” There is no stigma that you’re looking right now, so the more people who know you’re looking, the more likely you’ll find a job. Recently, LinkedIn added “status updates” which you can use to let your network know about your newly emancipated status.

2. Get LinkedIn recommendations from your colleagues. A strong recommendation from your manager highlights your strengths and shows that you were a valued employee. This is especially helpful if you were recently laid off, and there is no better time to ask for this than when your manager is feeling bad because she laid you off. If you were a manager yourself, recommendations from your employees can also highlight leadership qualities.

3. Find out where people with your backgrounds are working. Find companies that employ people like you by doing an advanced search for people in your area who have your skills. For example, if you’re a web developer in Seattle, search profiles in your zip code using keywords with your skills (for example, JavaScript, XHTML, Ruby on Rails) to see which companies employ people like you.

4. Find out where people at a company came from. LinkedIn “Company Profiles” show the career path of people before they began work there. This is very useful data to figure out what a company is looking for in new hires. For example, Microsoft employees worked at Hewlett-Packard and Oracle.

5. Find out where people from a company go next. LinkedIn’s “Company Profiles” also tell you where people go after leaving the company. You can use this to track where people go after leaving your company as well as employees of other companies in your sector. (You could make the case that this feature also enables to figure out which companies to avoid, but I digress.)

6. Check if a company is still hiring. Company pages on LinkedIn include a section called “New Hires” that lists people who have recently joined the company. If you have real chutzpah, you can ask these new hires how they got their new job. At the very least you can examine their backgrounds to surmise what made them attractive to the new employer.

7. Get to the hiring manager. LinkedIn’s job search engine allows you to search for any kind of job you want. However, when you view the results, pay close attention to the ones that you’re no more than two degrees away from. This means that you know someone who knows the person that posted the job—it can’t get much better than that. (Power tip: two degrees is about the limit for getting to hiring managers. I never help friends of friends of friends.) Another way to find companies that you have ties to is by looking at the “Companies in Your Network” section on LinkedIn’s Job Search page.

8. Get to the right HR person. The best case is getting to the hiring manager via someone who knows him, but if that isn’t possible you can still use LinkedIn to find someone inside the company to walk your resume to the hiring manager or HR department. When someone receives a resume from a coworker even if she doesn’t know the coworker, she almost always pays attention to it.

9. Find out the secret job requirements. Job listings rarely spell out entirely or exactly what a hiring manager is seeking. Find a connection at the company who can get the inside scoop on what really matters for the job. You can do this by searching for the company name; the results will show you who in your network connects you to the company. If you don’t have an inside connection, look at profiles of the people who work at the company to get an idea of their backgrounds and important skills.

10. Find startups to join. Maybe this recession is God telling you it’s time to try a startup. But great startups are hard to find. Play around with LinkedIn’s advanced search engine using “startup” or “stealth” in the keyword or company field. You can also narrow by industry (for example, startups in the Web 2.0, wireless, or biotech sectors). If large companies can’t offer “job security,” open up your search to include startups.

11. Build your network before you need it. As a last tip, no matter how the economy or your career is doing, having a strong network is a good form of job security. Don’t wait until times are tough to nurture your network. The key to networking (or “schmozing”), however, is filled with counter-intuitiveness. First, it’s not who you know—it’s who knows of you. Second, Great schmoozers are not thinking “What can this person do for me?” To the contrary, they are thinking, “What can I do for this person?” For more on schmoozing, read “The Art of Schmoozing.”

By Sue Zeidler

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) – Job-seeking in this 21st century recession may just have gone viral and mobile.

Since the start of the recession in December 2007, about 6.7 million workers have been laid off according to latest statistics — at a time the popularity of social networking sites such as Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter have exploded, drawing millions of users per day.

As these sites continue to alter social and cultural landscapes, they are also transforming the job search process, enabling more and more people to connect with potential employers, promote their own skills, set up support groups and search for job leads and contacts.

“Mobile technology and social networking has shifted the whole job search paradigm,” said Susan Joyce, editor of Job-Hunt.Org, a site offering online job search tips. “You don’t need to stay glued to your phone or computer at home anymore.”

With mobile devices playing a bigger role in the social networking phenomenon, any job hopeful with a Web-connected or smartphone can now compose resumes, view job listings and contact prospective employers on the go.

Joyce suggests creating a resume through popular networking site LinkedIn — a business networking site that lets users create a profile, list skills, work history, employment goals and contact details — is among the more secure ways to compile a resume online.

It can be done via Research in Motion Ltd’s Blackberry device or Apple Inc’s iPhone, she added.

“The LinkedIn Profile is really the resume of the future,” Joyce said. “The ‘resume’ on LinkedIn is really the standard LinkedIn Profile, but it’s very popular with recruiters looking for good candidates.

“You could build your whole LinkedIn presence from any Web-enabled phone.”

There are any number of job-search applications — downloadable programs for your phone — available for the iPhone, for instance, including one piloted by recruitment consultancy Harvey Nash. Others pool information on jobs in travel and in education, among other sectors.

GETTING CREATIVE

With jobs still scarce, many hopefuls are getting creative about getting noticed. Many have begun using Twitter — a microblogging service that allows users to send 140-character messages at a time — to get the word out.

A career is unlikely to be launched on Twitter alone, but candidates are increasingly “tweeting” or posting messages to outline their skills, experiences and career goals. They are pasting links to their resumes on the micro-blogging service.

People can also use Twitter to follow recruiters or companies of interest and learn of networking events.

Job seekers have gotten job leads and tips on networking events that they otherwise would have missed, had it not been for their Twitter or Facebook account.

“It’s really helped in these hard times. You have a much easier time finding job and networking events. And every time I go to one of these events, I add at least one connection,” said Nilo Sarraf, who was laid off from Yahoo Inc recently and formed a Silicon Valley online networking group called Layoffs Cafe at www.meetup.com/Layoffs-cafe/.

Layoffs Cafe is one of several online support groups that have sprung up during the downturn, tipping off job seekers where physical networking events are taking place.

Chris Hutchins, a former management and business strategy consultant in Silicon Valley, launched LaidOffCamp as the online component to offline events.

“We focus on organizing events for people who are unemployed,” said Hutchins, noting there have been about 11 “LaidOff Camps” set up around the country, drawing anywhere from 100 to 600 participants who attend panels on topics such as how to live on a budget, how to develop a personal brand and how to find a job in the current market.

“We spent no dollars on marketing. If it weren’t for social media and blogs, Laidoff Camp wouldn’t exist,” he said.

While candidates these days are taking advantage of to easily access job information, one of the downsides, according to job seekers and employment experts, is managing the data.

“It can be overwhelming. It’s hard to weed out all the information and manage your time,” said Sarraf.

Privacy issues and falling prey to the many recruiting, work-at-home, make-a-million and resume creation software scams are also risks for the unwary.

“When someone is job hunting, they need to be careful. I know a lot of people who have been hurt by bogus resume companies. People tend to think if its online, its legitimate and when you’re doing a resume, people are being asked to provide a lot of personal information, such as where you live and your social security number,” she added.

(Reporting by Sue Zeidler; editing by Edwin Chan and Andre Grenon)

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