Linkedin can be a great tool to find the right people for a job, a project or for one time help. In fact, it is that good that sometimes you get too many results and can’t see the forest for the trees. In this post I’m going to explain how to use Linkedin’s advanced search features in order to find people for specific tasks.

Let’s assume you’re looking for a PHP developer for your company. Here’s how you can use linked in to find people to hire:

1. In the search box type in PHP and hit search. The results will display people who mentioned the word PHP in their profile (note that people who are in your network show up first).
2. Refine the results by selecting or typing-in a location in the Location box on the left. Now, you will only see people from that location.
3. To further refine the results, in the groups box choose a group such as “Job networking” (of course you will have to be a member of that group in order to see it). That way you will get back people who are searching for a Job.

I made a video that illustrates how to do that, see it below:

Sometimes, finding the right person on Linkedin is not enough. The reason is that only paying users with premium account can send messages to people outside their network (That is, if you are not already connected to someone, you can’t message him).

Now, if it happens to you often, probably the best solution is to pay to upgrade your account. But if you don’t think it will pay off, here is a little built-in hack that can help you overcome this limitation.

The solution

In short – to send almost anyone on linkedin a message, simply join a group he or she is a member of.

Explanation

When you join a group on Linkedin, by default the members of the group can send you messages. Although you can turn this option off (see image below) people usually don’t tend to change default settings. Therefore, usually you will be able to send message to all the other members of the group.

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Two weeks a go I gave a lecture in a social media seminar. Now I’ve translated the presentation I used into English and made it easier to understand without seeing the actual lecture.

The presentation describes 20 social media practices that will help you in your daily life. It includes tools to monitor your web presence, ways to track interesting topics and conversations, methods to find people and to get answers, and more.

It revolves around the following seven categories:

1. People Database
2. Keeping in touch and more
3. Conversation
4. Search
5. Collaborating
6. Monitoring and News
7. Self monitoring

I’ll be glad to get your feedback and thoughts about it.

Social networks and social media tools let you find and communicate with people all over the world, even if you’ve never met or known them before. But sometimes, all you really need is the opinion, advice or support of the people closest to us. Status Search answers that need by letting you search your friends’ social status updates.

Recently launched in beta, Status Search is a little private search engine. It connects to your Facebook and Twitter accounts (no need to give away any passwords) and then lets you search the status updates of the people you follow, and also the photos, links and videos of your Facebook friends.

Can’t I just use Google?

If you think about it, many of your quests for information would be better answered, and sometimes can only be answered, by people you know or those who are in your close surroundings. Also, you have much better information about the reliability of these people and it is easier to approach them.

Let’s think of some realistic examples. It’s Saturday morning and you want to go with someone to the sea. Just type in ’sea’ and you’ll find all the people who’ve written something about it – some are probably about to go there…
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Once in a while I’m offered by a web service like Facebook, LinkedIn or Digg to give away my email username and password so that it could offer me new friends based on my contacts list. Being the key to all my other accounts and containing a lot of personal information, I’m not that thrilled to give away these details. The solution to that problem is to export your contacts to a file and then import it into the web services. Here is how to do that:

Example – Synchronizing Gmail with Linkedin

As an example, I will demonstrate how to import your contacts into Linkedin from your Gmail account, but the same apply for other web services and other email applications, including Outlook.

Export contacts from Gmail

1. Go to the “Contacts” sections.
2. Click “Export“.
3. Under “What format would you like to export to?” choose “Outlook’s CSV format“.
4. Click “Export” and save the file to your computer.

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To display the name and address of your site or blog in your LinkedIn profile:

1. go to Edit My Profile and click “edit” next to “websites.”
2. Choose “other“ in the websites section and write your sites name and address.