On the seventy-seventh installment of Tristan's Tips, our amazing host Tristan Layfield emphasizes the importance of cleaning and building up your LinkedIn connections list. Remember, LinkedIn is all about being seen by the right people, but you can't do that if your connections list is filled with inactive profiles and people who have nothing to do with where you're trying to go!

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TRANSCRIPT

Tristan: What's going on, Living Corporate? It's Tristan back again to bring you another career tip. This week let's talk about cleaning and building up your LinkedIn connections list.




When you take the time to curate your connections list, you are not only ensuring that the right people see you, but you're establishing rapport and building your thought leadership with people who may be able to help you or hire you down the line. Unfortunately, many of us are not that discerning with who we add on the platform. If you're anything like me, you started with a LinkedIn profile in college and just began adding people. You thought, the more people I'm connected to, the better, right? Well, I hate to be the bearer of bad news, but that's not exactly true. See the number of connections you have is what we like to call a vanity metric. Yes, it's nice to see the 500+ connections on your profile, but you don't get results off that number alone. It's less about the number of connections you have and more about the quality of connections you've made.




If you've had your profile for a couple of years, I'd suggest going through your connections list and getting rid of people who aren't active and people you don't know and don't plan to get to know like those irritating salespeople. I'm not telling you to get rid of friends from college or your old job or even to get rid of people completely outside of your industry, but just ask yourself, does this person engage on the platform? Is this person producing content fairly regularly? And is this content something I'd like to see? If the answer is no to any of those questions, that may be a person you’d want to consider putting on the chopping block. Doing this will help you begin to tailor your connections list so you can start seeing content you like and are more likely to engage with, making your time on LinkedIn more enjoyable. Sometimes this can get overwhelming, so maybe just go through 15 - 20 connections each time you log on, and before you know it, you'll have your list cleaned up.




Now, when it comes to making new connections, I recommend you start by adding people who are in similar roles to those you want to obtain in the near future. These people can help provide you insight into what it's like to be in that role, what it's like to work for that company, and if you develop a relationship with them, they may even give you a referral. Next, I suggest focusing on people who are one to two levels above where you want to be. These people are usually decision-makers, which means they may post open positions on their team and may even have the power to hire you for one of those positions. By adding those two groups of people, you can raise your visibility within the industry simply by interacting with their posts often. And when they interact with yours, their connections list see that as well. Don't forget to send a personalized message when connecting with them to increase your chances of them accepting your request.




Remember, LinkedIn is all about being seen by the right people, but you can't do that if your connections list is filled with inactive profiles and people who have nothing to do with where you're trying to go.




This tip was brought to you by Tristan of Layfield Resume Consulting. Check us out on Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook @LayfieldResume or connect with me, Tristan Layfield, on LinkedIn.