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Welcome back to Price Waterhouse Cooper’s Startup Radio with your host, Steve Bankston.
LinkedIn has become a massively popular site yet many people, including me, are unclear
how to best use it. Our next guest, Joe Pelayo, CEO of Joseph Michaels, is here to discuss
how to maximize your benefit from LinkedIn. Joe, you’re one of the most LinkedIn people
in the world, is that right?
Yes, well, I was told by an inside source at LinkedIn that I’m in the top 1/100th
of a percent. There’s 25,000,000 users, so that means there’s 2,500 people ahead
of me but it still feels pretty good to be in the top 1/100th of a percent.
And roughly how many connections do you have and how’d you get it so large?
Well, I have 8,515 connections and I’ve been a LinkedIn member for a long time. If
people are on LinkedIn, they can go to LinkedIn, view my profile and up in the www, the url
bar, will show their name (their LinkedIn.com name) and a number and an interesting bit
of trivia that nobody really knows and nobody really cares about, but if you want to know
what number you are, I was the 16 thousandth member of LinkedIn. And 16,548 was my number
on LinkedIn. I began to reach out to people and do it the old fashioned way. And then
used some advanced techniques that I’m teaching people now in some LinkedIn courses, webinars,
and what-not.
What are some networking tips that you can share with our audience that have helped you
get more value out of your LinkedIn exposure?
Well, on LinkedIn, step one is you want to connect to some hubs because if you’re not
connected to hubs, hubs being a lion or a LinkedIn open networker, somebody with a lot
of connections. You can be on LinkedIn and you can be like Jason Alvin’s book which
says, “I’m LinkedIn. Now what?” It’s a good beginning book on LinkedIn but if you’re
not connected to a number of people, you won’t be able to see a number of people, you won’t
see the value.
So, step one I think is to connect to some hubs, people who are very well connected on
LinkedIn. I’m a LinkedIn open networker which means anyone can send me a LinkedIn
connection and I’ll look it over and most likely would accept their LinkedIn invitation
to connect. I’m like Will Rogers who said “A stranger is just a friend I haven’t
met yet”.
How do you find hubs like you?
Well, there’s a good site called Top LinkedIn, TopLinked.com, that lists the top 50 LinkedIn
members in the world and have some advanced techniques. That’s one thing you can do.
You can also run a search in your industry. It depends who you want to connect to. I have
8,515 connections but what I’m mostly concerned with is that I’m connected to the CEOs and
the CFOs and the VP of HR and the Director of HR and the people in the audience that
might buy my recruiting services and the work that I do there. It’s great that I have
8 thousand connections but what I want is to be connected to the people that I want
to be able to reach. And so you want to be strategic in who you’re connecting with
to make sure you have access to the people you want to have access to and that’s different
for people depending on the work they’re doing.
How’d you get into this business?
Well, I got into the recruiting business, Steve, at age 17. I just turned 40 so now
I’m in my 23rd year in the recruiting business. To be honest with you, I responded to an ad
in the paper and began getting trained in the recruiting business by General Employment,
a publicly held recruiting firm and built my career from there. And now I’m so pleased
I’ve been recognized by Recruiter Life Magazine as one of the top 75 recruiters in the United
States recently.
What do you think are some of the LinkedIn applications that most people don’t know
about?
Good question. Well, one thing you can do is the answers page, you can ask questions
and answers on the answers page. One question I asked was, I saw where a lot of people were
struggling with, and me, myself was struggling with the new releases of Microsoft and it
looked like Google was bringing out some applications that were Word and Email and Outlook and I’ve
had the history of kind of being out there on the edge of technology and I didn’t want
to be out on the edge of the wave on this thing, so I asked a question of a lot of friends
separate from LinkedIn, “Have you tried Google Apps?” and a lot of people didn’t
know what I was talking about. Some people did but not much feedback that I got. I asked
one question on LinkedIn of a selected group of contacts, “What has been your experience
using Google Apps?” and I got 25 answers.
We are just about out of time. If someone wants to learn more about LinkedIn or about
your business, what’s the best way to reach you?
They can reach me through my website. It’s JosephMichaels.com. And my speaking website
is JPSpeaking.com.
Thanks, Joe, for sharing your thoughts on LinkedIn. It’s certainly a popular service.
It’s great to know more about it. Good luck with your business.
Great! Thanks, Steve. Thanks for having me on and we’ll see you soon.
Next up, we’ll learn about being your own boss in an online marketplace. From Silicon
Valley, I’m Steve Bankston.