We often think of LinkedIn as a tool for telling people who we are and what we're up to and, because so many people dislike doing both of those things, the true power of LinkedIn gets overlooked.

Instead of scrolling through posts, throwing out a like or comment here and there, you could be putting this super research tool to much better use.

This is particularly true for those who score low on the Knowledge of Options dial.

It's sometimes difficult to see what's possible when you've become conditioned to leaning into only your current knowledge base. Sometimes you're not even aware that you're doing that, so you convince yourself that you're limited in your career moves.

I have many conversations with people who lament that as their manager isn't going anywhere any time soon, that they're stuck and unable to see what else is possible - be that in their own organisation or elsewhere.

Putting on your wily investigator hat can work wonders here.

Here's one way to do that:

Think about people who've left your current organisation or department or even role.

Look them up on LinkedIn - maybe you know where they went to initially but you may not have kept track of subsequent moves. Note their workplaces, departments, environments.

Who else works alongside them? What is their background?

Build out a picture of the types of roles in the organisation and the types of people they attract.

Of course, you can do this for your own workplace if it's sizeable enough. And this exercise also gives you a good idea of other organisations who look for people like you and gives you an insight into the wonderful world of job titles. Job titles can be very different according to where you're doing that type of job - one man's VP is another man's director, depending on the size and structure of an organisation.

The Power of Institutional Pages

Workplaces and educational institutions have comprehensive, searchable pages on LinkedIn. So if you've recently studied, look up your institutions page, where you'll find a search tool that you can use to search by keyword, job family or even location. Where do people who studied in your institution work? What do they do that could feasibly be a next move for you?

It's the same deal with workplaces. Plucking one out of the air by way of illustration, I just looked up a well known food brand in the UK (I've just eaten a yoghurt). When I click on the people tab I can see that they have nearly 3000 associated members, and the largest job family is operations. If I type in 'marketing' as a key word, one of the profiles I'm shown is of someone with 'commercial' in their current title and 'marketing' in their past. This tells me that I can move from a marketing role to a commercial role in this organisation at least.

If I go very far into this research I get a sense for how mobile people are within the organisation and how long a tenure people tend to have - all very usable data when it comes to assessing my options against my wants and needs.

And for every organisation I look at, LinkedIn gives me suggestions (on the right-hand side) for other organisations I might be interested in, some of which I may or may not have heard of.

What a powerhouse this tool is!

So, drop the scrolling and get to researching - dig deep, dig far and wide, become more rabbit.

See you soon,
Sarah

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I'm already booking conversations for this month and next about how I can help your organisation develop and retain talent through the framework in my soon to be released book. If this is something you're interested in reach out for a conversation to find out how I can help you.