TL;DR

Follow the instructions and start connecting!

Getting rejected?

Did you see the post of your dream job on LinkedIn and decided to apply?
Then Hold on and don't click that Easy Apply button!

You should know that if you do it means your job application will end up in a pile of hundreds of other job applications. This doesn't necessarily mean you won't get noticed and get the interview. But if you want to significantly increase your chances and have recruiters spend more than 10 seconds on your resume, I'm here to tell you there's a better way!

Getreferred

The best way to get the interview is to get referred or recommended by an influential employee within the company. It will push your resume further up the line, or lead straight to an interview.

The good news is that even if you don't have insider connections to your organization of interest, it is possible to get a referral.Many companies have a referral compensation program and even if the company you're applying to doesn't, most people are willing to help a fellow collegue.

So there you have it, instead of blindly submiting your application, go to the company's LinkedIn page and start sending personalized messages to as many employees in relevant positions as possible.

Easy peasy, right? Well.. as simple as it may sound, it takes time, a lot of time! That's why after long hours of doing this cumbersome job with many companies manually I decided to build a simple bot to automate it.

Let the bot do thework

Step 1

Go to the People section of the company you're interested in (make sure your LinkedIn is in english)

Step 2

Copy the content of the script and modify the constants at the top to your liking:

     Constant                      Description                   MAX_CONNECTIONS    Maximum amount of connection requests        WAIT_TO_CONNECT    Time in ms to wait before requesting to                         connect                                      WAIT_AFTER_SCROLL  Time in ms to wait before new employees                         load after scroll                            MESSAGE            Message to connect (%EMPLOYEE% and %COMPANY%                    will be replaced with the real values, 300                      characters max.)                             POSITION_KEYWORDS  Keywords to filter employees in specific                        positions                                   

Example:

const MAX_CONNECTIONS = 30;const WAIT_TO_CONNECT = 3000;const WAIT_AFTER_SCROLL = 3000;const MESSAGE = `Hi %EMPLOYEE%, I'm a Software Engineer with 4 years of experience in full-stack web development. I see you're currently working at %COMPANY% where I saw a Full Stack job post and was interested to hear more about it. Would you (or a colleague) have time to chat about the position?Thanks!`;const POSITION_KEYWORDS = ["software", "developer", "r&d", "hr", "recruiting"];

Step 3

Open the Console panel (Press Command+Option+J for Mac or Control+Shift+J for Windows), paste the script and hit enter to run the script (or add it as a snippet)

That's it! Get ready to receive lots of messages of people who want to help you land your dream job.

Conclusion

I built the bot for myself, I ran into a problem and solved it the best way I knew how, coding. It saved me hours of work, helped me get several interviews and expand my network with relevant connections.

Despite it's simplicity and many limitations (e.g. only works for LinkedIn in english, might not work for other browser than Chrome, highly dependant on LinkedIn current structure) I decided to share it with the world to help those in the same situation as me.

Finally, I want to mention that I've read of people online who got temporarily banned from connecting on LinkedIn for abusing the use of automations tools. Although I haven't had any issues so far (after sending hundreds of messages), I advise you use it with caution and at your own risk:)