📥 Top 4 tips to connect with anyone on LinkedIn

Welcome to the final part of the mentor series.

I travelled to Singapore last week to meet other founders in education. I wanted to meet as many of them as I could, so I decided to throw a small party.

I ended up having 47 people RSVP.

How? I reached out to everyone on LinkedIn and invited them to come by.

It got me thinking, though - what makes a good LinkedIn outreach message?

This week we'll be diving into how to reach out to potential mentors or employers on LinkedIn, and increase your success rate of hearing back.

The Flood of Requests 🌊 

I get hundreds of LinkedIn requests - most of them I ignore - so I’ve decided to explain which LinkedIn connections I actually accept.

Whilst this may seem harsh I’m sure that if you had 557 people wanting to connect, you’d be tempted to do the same:

With this many invitations, you need to stand out.

So, here are four things you can do to stand out. To me, this makes a great LinkedIn connection that I want to talk to and learn more about.

Let's jump in.

1) Leave a Note 📝 

99% of people I accept leave a note. A note is an amazing way to let the person know why you’ve added them.

If I think it’s an automated message, I just ignore them. Building on this, what I look for in a message:

2. Explain how we met 🤝 

When someone says “we met at this event or I saw you at this workshop” then I can easily filter them from the rest of the connections and add them.

Sometimes it’s as simple as: “I read your article’ or ‘I did your course on X and I learned this.’

3. Be Specific 🧔🏾‍♂️

DONT say “Hey, would love to connect” - It’s so vague and I get way too many of these messages.

Mentors, who are usually quite stretched with their time, prefer something specific to them.

For example, if someone likes the work I do, they will say something specfic they liked about it, and explain why they think we should meet.

‘Hey Ajay, I noticed you do a lot of work in X. I do Y and I think its relevant due to these reasons.’

4. Create a Hook 🪝 

Just like a catchy email, you want to have a sort of hook that draws people in. The hook I use is how many users we have on EntryLevel and what is really unique about my company. That usually gets people's attention.

Here are two examples:

1) Hey Ajay, I started a newsletter in the product management space that’s started to get some traction. I would love to get your thoughts.

2) Hey Ajay, I know you love education. I found a cool resource for you to check out here on product management that explains how to coach junior Product Managers.

The first example is vague and has nothing to do with me. It feels like more of a task - reading a newsletter and sharing my feedback.

In the second example, the ‘I know you love education’ seems like you have genuinely thought of me while sharing the article.

You also gave me insight on what sort of article it is, and I’m interested to know more.

Now, let's test what you've learned

Hopefully, these quick tips on reaching out to mentors on LinkedIn explained how to stand out next to hundreds of other LinkedIn connections.

Now, time to shoot your shot.

Feel free to send me a request applying what you've learned and see if I accept.

I may not reply to all of them, but I'll do my best to view and accept those I think gave it a good shot.

Jobs! 💼 

We heard you last update, and know you want to see more jobs. So, here are 6 great remote jobs we found online. Next edition we'll aim to have more of them from global companies.

Awesomic.io is hiring a Remote Customer Success Manager. Link here.

Simply Business is hiring a Remote Junior UX Product Designer. Link here.

BuildZoom is hiring a Junior Product Manager. Link here

Plaid is hiring a Product Designer. Link here.

Deel is hiring a remote Finance Data Analyst. Link here.

Discord is hiring a Data Analyst in Product Analytics. Link here.

Do you have a great question for us? Treat us like a Mentor!

Click ‘reply’ and send us your question and we’ll pick 1 or 2 to answer each week! We’ve already started preparing some answers for the following weeks.

We’re stockpiling some great questions that we will be answering in a future community newsletter.