Kevin Bacon and Your Job Search

You may have heard of the game "Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon" which theorizes that the actor Kevin Bacon is the center of the Hollywood universe and that every actor who ever existed is connected to Kevin Bacon by no more than six degrees. No matter how hard you try, it is nearly impossible to find an actor, no matter how obscure or old that is more than six degrees away from Kevin Bacon. For example, by using the Oracle of Bacon website, I found out that Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle has a Bacon number of 3. It goes like this:





Roscoe "Fatty" Arbuckle was in "Character Studies" (1927) with Buster Keaton. Buster Keaton was in the "The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" (1960) with Patty McCormack. Patty McCormack was in "Frost/Nixon" (2008) with Kevin Bacon.



Wikipedia defines Six degrees of Separation (also referred to as the "Human Web") as "the idea that, if a person is one step away from each person they know and two steps away from each person who is known by one of the people they know, then everyone is at most six steps away from any other person on Earth."



So what does this have to do with LinkedIn and looking for a job? EVERYTHING! One of the key components to a successful job search is networking. And, the ultimate goal of networking is to land an introduction to the hiring manager of the company for which you are trying to go to work. The hiring manager may not be in your immediate "circle of influence" but you will be amazed at who your second and third level of contacts are. Here is how networking on LinkedIn can be useful:





When you sign up for your free account on LinkedIn, you have to create a profile. Most people just gloss over this stage and don’t put a lot of effort into creating one. It would almost be like posting your resume on Monster but not including any details. The key to successful networking works two ways. You not only want to find business professionals to help you network, but you also want to be a provider of information for someone looking to network, as well.





Once you have your LinkedIn profile up and running (this really acts as an online resume), you will want to invite people into your network. Here is how LinkedIn works. I’ll use myself as an example:





I currently have 234 people that are in my personal network. These are all of my first degree contacts. If I include all of the 1st degree contacts that my 234 contacts have in their network, I now have access to over 99,100 people. These are all of my 2nd degree contacts. If I include all of the contacts that my 2nd degree contacts have in their network, I now have access to over 6,922,600 contacts. These are my 3rd degree contacts. Currently, LinkedIn allows you to have access up to your 3rd degree network. So if you total up the users that I can contact through an introduction, my network total adds up to over 7,022,000 people. This past week alone, I had 41,536 people join my network as either a 1st, 2nd or 3rd degree contact! That’s a lot of people that can potentially help me in my search by making introductions on my behalf.





You can build up your personal, 1st level network, rather quickly. The easiest way to see who you know that may already be on LinkedIn is by downloading a free LinkedIn tool for Outlook. This tool will search your Outlook address book to see who is already on LinkedIn and invite them to join your network. For those who are not on LinkedIn, you can choose who you wish to invite to join. Some people aggressively build up their network by networking with anyone. Others are more select and only invite those people they know.





Once you have your network established, you can now start to make connections. Here’s how:



Suppose that I am a Financial Accountant in the Oil and Gas industry and I am looking for work. I would start by making an extensive list of companies in the area for whom I want to work. I would further subdivide my list of companies into 3 separate categories (A, B and C). A companies are my first preference, B my second and so on. I WOULD NOT include in this list any recruiting agencies or search firms (I will explain why later).





The next step is to try to determine who I would need to talk to in each company (by title). This would typically be the person for whom you would directly report to. In this example, I might try to locate the Controller, CFO, Accounting Manager or Vice President of Accounting. I would not try to locate someone in Human Resources at this point simply because they are not the person who makes the hiring decision. Remember, the goal of any good networker is to get your resume in front of the hiring manager.





Finally, you will use the "Advanced" link under People Search. Start with your "A" companies and work your way down the list. In this example, I may want to try to find a hiring manager at Halliburton. My recommendation is to start your search off broad and narrow as you go. So, I would click on the "Advance" link and under Company, I type "Halliburton". There is a drop down box under company, select "Current" companies only. The only other box I complete is the "Location" drop down box. I select "In or near" and I enter my zip code and search within a 50 mile radius and then I hit search. I come back with 1, 782 results of current employees working at Halliburton within the 50 mile radius. Obviously, I want to narrow this number down so I start searching by title and enter "Controller" which narrows my results down to 10. Do this for every possible title at every possible company and create a spreadsheet of all of your possible networking contacts.





Now you are ready to start networking and requesting introductions. I will discuss strategies and what to say in my next post. Please write back and let me know your thoughts and questions. If you would like to join my network on LinkedIn, you can invite me using my email address tcook@pathfinderstaffing.com.