It is a fact that LinkedIn is one such platform, which is put to use mainly for business networking, but that doesn’t mean, you can go to any extent to contact the recruiters.
The recruiters out there would love to help you and they are there to provide you with a guideline if you intend to do so, but you must know how to frame your question and what to ask the recruiter in the first place.
The recruiting industry is a friendly one and the recruiters very well know what the job situations are, so they try their level best to help out the candidates.
They would love to network, meet new people because the more they do these things the more chances of finding the perfect candidate for the position.
Good candidates are hard to find and through networking, recruiters are helping their cause too.
Answering the Right Questions:
Most of us think that we are the only one who has passed on an introductory message to the recruiter, so they must not have any problem in helping us personally.
But, the fact is that the recruiters land up hundreds of introduction requests almost every week and even when they want to help everybody with their queries, they are not able to do so.
Most of the time they end up providing job search tips in general and most importantly, they do not have the time to personally go through your resume and rectify it.
Therefore, what you need to do is that, take these useful tips from the recruiter and work on it. Recruiters love to use this platform of LinkedIn a lot, but only the candidates who are smart enough are able to utilize the presence of recruiter on LinkedIn to optimum level.
Others end up wasting their chances by asking wrong questions and taking all the wrong steps.
LinkedIn – A Platform for Networking:
We all have been using LinkedIn as a source for professional networking. Apart from networking people also use this platform seeking job opportunities, but where most of us make the mistake is that we forget that LinkedIn is just a stepping stone.
In a quest to get desired job, job seekers, mostly overdo things and the same thing happens with LinkedIn profiles as well.
They forget the actual reason they are here, instead they become quite persistent to find a suitable job offer on LinkedIn only. You can explore the options, but you must also ensure that you are not crossing the line in doing so.
While making use of this platform, it must be kept in mind that LinkedIn is only a tool and it would turn into a boomerang and hurt you if you do not know how to use it properly.
Your attempt might be honest, but there are certain questions that you cannot ask directly because your approach will be treated as unprofessional.
Moreover, you must not ask for endorsements because that also will not go down well with the recruiter. So, you need to be professional and know your game well, so that you can play it effectively and efficiently.
Tips to Contact Recruiters on LinkedIn after Sending Application:
LinkedIn is a platform for networking professionally, but that doesn’t mean the job seekers will keep on misusing it or take advantage of the platform.
Instead, just go through the following tips, so that you know what to ask and how to make the most out of this platform.
1. Never ask whether any job position is available for you or not:
The recruiters are not sitting there to sift through a heap of positions and find a suitable job for you. This might be an apt question for a recruiter who works for an agency, but if you are connecting with a corporate recruiter or in – house recruiter, then it is better to stay away from these kinds of questions.
When you are getting in touch with the corporate recruiter, it will be really good if you can do some work on your own about the job position that is vacant. This is mainly due to the reason that the recruiters who are sitting there are not job finders.
Moreover, if it is a big organization, then there might be hundreds of openings at the same time and different recruiters are appointed to take care of each opening.
Therefore, it is not possible for one recruiter to remember all the job positions that are there on offer, even when it is the same organization that he works for day in and day out. It is you who need to go through the career page of the organization and see for yourself whether you fit into any position or not.
Most importantly, when you do the research on your own, then it will also speed up the whole procedure as well and it will be less of a burden on the recruiter too.
2. Restrict yourself from asking for a contact in the company:
This is one job, which you can do it yourself, so why bother the recruiter with such a lame thing. Instead, what you can do is conduct the LinkedIn search all by yourself and look for contacts that will help you.
It can be your peer in the same company where you have applied for a position or a hiring manager or a recruiter. After zeroing down on the contact, you can go ahead with the introduction request.
You know what you are looking for and how to achieve that, therefore, help yourself first, so that the recruiter can help you later.
3. It is not a nice thing to ask the recruiter to review your resume:
If you feel that your resume is not up to the mark, then there are experts who will be more than happy to help you out with your resume in exchange of a good amount of money.
In order to save that money you cannot ask the recruiter to go through your resume and provide you with the feedback or suggestions.
Going through the resume and making the required changes is a time consuming affair because for that a discussion is important between the candidate and a person who is preparing the resume for you.
The candidate must be clear about his or her objective, career goals, the experience he or she posses.
Depending on that, extensive rewriting needs to be done, which is quite a time consuming affair and the corporate recruiters don’t have that much time to help you out of this ordeal.
In this scenario, the best thing that they can do is provide you with the reference of an expert who can help you with this.
4. Don’t ask them to look for a job for you:
The question might seem to be harmless, but in reality the recruiters hate this type of question.
The recruiters are networking on LinkedIn to find a suitable candidate for a particular job and not look for a suitable job position for the candidate.
The corporate recruiters are not the headhunters, so when you are connecting with a recruiter just make sure you don’t ask them this silly question.
5. Avoid asking for someone else’s contact details:
Would you like it if your friend gave out your contact information to unknown person?
The answer will be No, so why do you think that the recruiter will love to give away the contact details of someone else even if he knows that person well.
If the person wants others to contact him, then he would readily make available his contact details and if you do not find anything in his LinkedIn profile, then you must understand that the person is not open to receive any unknown message in his personal or professional mail inbox.
Instead, what you can do is make use of Introduction Request option that is present on LinkedIn and connect with this contact and yes, at this point you can ask the recruiter to pass on the introduction request because they won’t be having any problem in doing so.
6. Getting a recommendation or endorsement on the very first move:
What were you thinking when you asked the recruiter to recommend you from the word go?
He doesn’t know you personally or professionally, so how can he write you a recommendation letter just on the basis of your resume that you have provided.
The recruiters are there to help you with your job search and they are eager to help you out, but without interacting with you, how can they write something about you.
The recommendation letter that will really sound genuine are the ones that you get from your co-workers or your ex-boss or even the clients.
7. Setting up an interview date:
You cannot ask this question prior to applying for a position in the company. The best way to approach for this question is to apply for the vacant position and then make the recruiter aware that you have already applied for the position, so if he can arrange an interview date.
This way it will be easier for the recruiter to help you out. But, just remember to check the profile of the recruiter very well because you don’t want to request for an interview date with the recruiter’s former employer.
Before you ask, this question, check out the current employer of the recruiter.
8. Let’s not get too personal:
Though the sound of meeting over a coffee or lunch might seem to be a good idea for you, but the recruiters would love to carry on the communication through email.
If you have been in touch with this recruiter for a long time, then you can ask this question, but if you have just started the conversation, then it is a bad idea to ask these types of questions.
The day of a recruiter is filled with so many appointments already that it becomes almost impossible for them to stick in any other kinds of invitation.
9. Flirting is not a good idea on LinkedIn:
You might be charming and you have charmed your way earlier too, but using the LinkedIn platform for doing that is not a good idea.
So, you must not come up with something like how pretty you are or your smile is so beautiful on LinkedIn.
Instead, try to maintain a professional language, all throughout because LinkedIn is not just any social networking site where you can take the leverage of complimenting someone on their looks.
10. Never ever address the recruiter with their first name spelt incorrectly:
This is not due to the fact that recruiters don’t like to be called by their first name, but the problem lies elsewhere.
The issue is that you might get the spelling of the Recruiter’s name wrong and that would definitely be counted as a bad first impression.
You don’t want to turn off your recruiter on the very first attempt, so what you can do is go through the profile of the recruiter first and make sure that you have got their name correctly. If required double check the spelling of the name in order to get it right.
