Saturday, March 29, 2014

My Secret Career Weapon: LinkedIn

By Mei Lee

I was born to be a digital marketer. Since I was a kid, I used the latest breaking news to tell stories to convince people to support my cause.  When the Internet arrived, I became obsessed with using technologies to scale my ability to make an impact.  These days, I love being in the sweet spot where marketing meets technology.

So it may be no surprise that I found eight of my last career building opportunities on LinkedIn. But if you’d told me when I graduated from college that LinkedIn would be my secret career weapon, I wouldn’t have believed it. In the decade since graduation, thanks to LinkedIn I’ve landed several dream jobs at amazing companies like Disney, J. Crew, and Conde Nast. I’ve also received professional opportunities to serve on a corporate board, act as an expert advisor to institutional investors, and speak at conferences—all because of my activity on LinkedIn.

Given all the success I’ve experienced with LinkedIn, I wanted to share some advice on how anyone can use LinkedIn to build their career:

Read the rest here.

4 comments:

  1. I'd say rule #1 for success on Linkedin is to pay whatever it takes to have yourself transformed into a hot asian chick.

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  2. Thanks for posting this. It is a different narrative than that espoused by North.

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  3. You've had 8 jobs? Why so many?

    What is the longest you've worked at one company?

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  4. I love North, but his comment was just curmudgeonly. In my law practice, I won't get clients by having a personal blog. I represent Boards and CEOs who don't give a crap about that stuff. They want a deal-making expert.

    So Linked-in is a useful free online address book, or a way to track down decision makers for free. You can also pursue opportunities to give presentations and speeches, for which there is no shortage of solicitations. Groups want exposure, so they as for speakers, and speakers want exposure, so they give that to the groups. I've done one of them myself recently at a fairly prominent trade group's convention. Not that I got any work out of it...

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