Sourcing School: Help, I’m Almost Out of InMails! with Mikey Weil

Ryan:  00:35
All right, Mr. Fink, we’ve got Mikey Weil with us today. What is going on Mr. Fink?

Brian:  00:42
Nothing much, man. It’s a lively day in the household. Maddy is running around. So if anyone hears a screaming five-year-old, I promise you that I am paying you more attention than I am paying her.

Ryan:  00:53
But you are a bachelor this week.

Brian:  00:57
Yes. Yes I am. Ryan, what’s going on with your world? How things shakin’ up?

Ryan:  01:01
Oh, not much, man. Just fishing, kayaking, doing my thing. And the family goes away Sunday. So, for four or five days, I will be a bachelor. And in between work, I will be fishing. Or it could be in between fishing, I will be working, but we’re not here for our stories. We’re here for Mr. Mikey Weil. Mikey. What’s going on, my man?

Mikey:  01:22
How’s it going? Thanks for having me here. Excited to be here.

Ryan:  01:25
Yeah. Escalate. Good. Glad to have y’all. Hey look, before we get, before we kick off, we’re going to be talking about breaking down the strategy behind LinkedIn and Indeed. Sure, you can’t see him on video, but he’s got things, got to share how to source, message and connect without credits? I know that’s everybody’s pain in the ass that they need to fix, but before we get into your secret sauce behind what you do, break it down for us. What’s your strategy, if you can, behind LinkedIn and Indeed?

Mikey:  01:54
Sure, sure. If I run out or just in general?

Ryan:  01:58
Just in general.

Mikey:  01:59
Yeah. Yeah. So I love Indeed and LinkedIn and I’m on them pretty much an equal amount. I love Indeed. I set up resume alerts for all my recs, my evergreen recs, everything like that. You know, first thing in the morning, I’ll go through my resume alerts. I’m a big believer of, if I’m the first one reaching out to these people, I’m going to get them in the door before my competition is going to. I also can source for a whole entire rec for an hour or two, just off of Indeed resume alerts. So I really liked that. I like Indeed because when people respond, you get their email and phone number right away and you can follow up that way.

Mikey:  02:32
LinkedIn, sometimes through InMail, you go back and forth for five days trying to get their contact info for a resume. So, I like that. And then LinkedIn, I just love for its networking purpose. I just hit my 30,000 connections, which now I’m regretting and going back on. But yeah, LinkedIn, I just love for the networking. I love for that part. Just referrals and all of that. And yeah, I think they both have their own strengths. There’s no doubt, but I use them on you each computer pretty evenly.

Brian:  03:01
Hey, Mikey, I want to ask you about the 30,000 connections. Is that on LinkedIn? And maybe I’m getting ahead of myself, I’m always ahead of myself. I’ve got the 30,000. I keep backing away from 30,000. There’s an option to engage something called Creator Mode, which would, instead of showing your connections is from what I understand, will only show those people that are following you. Have you thought about engaging creator mode and if so, what are the pros and cons and why have, or haven’t you done it?

Mikey:  03:32
Interesting. I didn’t even know what that was. I know that people can follow you past 30,000. I’m just glad it’s not called influencer because then I definitely wouldn’t care to do it, but the fact that it’s creator, I like that.

Mikey:  03:43
For me, I think I’m trying to go back on my 30,000 and delete because for me, why I connect with people on LinkedIn is for the contact info. I’m great with people search engines. I’m good really good at finding people’s email and phone numbers, but more anybody I send an InMail to, I like to request to connect with them on LinkedIn. So the next day when they’ve accepted, I know that’s the right email, I know that’s the right phone number, I know that I can send them that free follow-up message over chat. So for me, I’m trying to go back on that 30,000 so I can really use it to connect and really get those first-degree connections. But creator mode sounds cool. I mean, I’m always trying to get creative on LinkedIn and post some fun stuff. I post my daily tips and tricks on there. So, I think that’d be a cool thing to do just to have some followers from an audience that way.

Brian:  04:33
All right. So, something that you and I will follow up at our next conference is creator mode and whether or not it’s something to really engage individuals in the community and build a following like an influencer. Actually, about influencing, I guess that brings me to one of the things that I enjoy in my every day and that is Mikey Weil’s tip that he puts out there. Mikey, where’d you come up with the idea for the tip on how to connect with people? Or most recently, about how to go into the ATS or not to go into the ATS? What’s your Genesis on… What’s your Genesis point on creating that kind of content?

Mikey:  05:15
Sure. Yeah. So last year, I think maybe halfway through the year, I was posting a daily tip and trick. I just love helping people find jobs. And somebody asked me why I like recruiting. It took me two years out of college to find a job, I was out of work for six months last year, I’ve been on the recruiting side, I’ve been on the job-seeking side. So for me, I love sharing my knowledge, and last year I was sharing a daily tip and trick, and then I was like, let’s go for one day a year. Let’s go for one business day a year. Let’s do it that way. I want to help job seekers. I want to help recruiters. I want to point out the simple things that people don’t think about. You tell a job seeker, “Hey, you want to go work for Apple? Connect with an Apple recruiter on LinkedIn, send them your resume, what jobs you’re interested in, why you’re a fit.” And job seekers go, “I am allowed to connect recruiters?” And I’m like, “Yes” like they want that. They want that. That’s easy for them.

Mikey:  06:05
So for me, I’m doing the daily tips and tricks. And I haven’t mentioned this really yet, not that it’s that big, but I’m actually at the end of the year going to be taking each of them and putting them into a desktop calendar for next year. So I’m compiling them right now. I need to find out how to publish them, but come like October, November, I’m going to start selling desktop calendars for 2022. And whether you’re a job seeker or a sourcer or recruiter, each day, you’re going to rip off one of the tips and tricks. And it’ll just kind of help people think outside the box, try a new strategy every day, and things like that.

Mikey:  06:42
So, I just like sharing. I sometimes run out of ideas. Sometimes I’m like 10 days behind, like right now and I have to catch up, but I have the whole list compiled. I’m always using Ctrl+F to see if I’m repeating something and it’s a great way to share other resources to other communities to check out conferences, other people’s books and things like that. So, it’s a good way to kind of get everything out there and people definitely find some value in it, which has been nice and it brings attention to things that people don’t know about. And yeah, I just got to… I’m more than halfway through the year now. So, I think I’ve, what four months left to go.

Brian:  07:20
Yeah.

Ryan:  07:21
Yeah.

Mikey:  07:22
That’s about it.

Ryan:  07:22
So Mikey, tell me this, you’re… we’re going to talk about what… we’re going to talk about, how to source a message and connecting without credits on LinkedIn. What are you doing to make yourself successful there?

Mikey:  07:36
So, Indeed and LinkedIn, let me say. So, yeah. What I’m kind presenting about and what I like is, I recently started to run low on my InMails, right. And that happens to all of us. A lot of us work on high volume and/or evergreen recs, so, we have to send out a couple hundred messages here and there. We might spend one day looking at 2000 resumes on LinkedIn and sending them out. So, what I really wanted to talk about is what I’m doing right now is being conservative, being frugal with your messages and kind of taking it that way.

Mikey:  08:08
So, one of my strategies is using the other platform, of course. So, if I’m running low on LinkedIn, I’ll go over to Indeed for a couple of weeks and kind of work off of those messages or vice versa. Another great thing, I don’t think a lot of people know is on Indeed, you can actually send free messages to veterans. So, that’s another great way to do it too. You can use the filter for veterans and you can message them and it doesn’t count as any actual messages.

Ryan:  08:37
I did not know. That is interesting.

Brian:  08:39
That is a takeaway.

Ryan:  08:40
Yeah. Great feature.

Mikey:  08:41
And then LinkedIn, I think it’s a little harder to filter, but it will give you a little pop-up bubble. On LinkedIn, you can send a lot of free InMails to people. So, you can go on recruiter and I think you can filter by first connections. That way, those people are all free. Not only that, you can also send messages to people for free, who I might be wrong, who are engaged with your talent brand or open to new opportunities.

Mikey:  09:04
You’ll see on there. And it’ll say like, this is one of your 800 InMails left, or it’ll say this one’s free to send and here’s why. Look at that bubble and kind of learn who’s free, who’s not free, but I think nobody understands how many relevant first connections they have, even if you’ve got a new role across your desk for a full stack developer and you’re like, I’ve never worked on this role, I’m not connected to these people. You’re probably connected to at least a couple hundred from college, from networking events, from people who change career paths. Use your first connections, export your database ‘the first connections’. Use it as a kind of extra CRM, filter it, use Ctrl+F, find those people and reach out to them.

Ryan:  09:46
First off…

Brian:  09:47
Hey, Mikey.

Ryan:  09:48
Good on Indeed, for given that option. I did not know that. And I think…

Brian:  09:52
That’s awesome.

Ryan:  09:52
…that’s fantastic. Go ahead, Fink. I cut you off. You take it.

Brian:  09:56
No worries. So Mikey, what I wanted to add to your talking about free messaging on LinkedIn. A lot of people don’t know that if people have a paid LinkedIn account, a premium account, that you can message them for free. So, if they’ve got the little gold LinkedIn icon, you can send them an email for free, whether you’re in LinkedIn recruiter or whether you’re in free LinkedIn.

Mikey:  10:18
Perfect. Perfect. And that is… is that something you can filter more or you look out for that gold symbol?

Brian:  10:24
You got to look out for the gold symbol. There’s yeah. I wish there was a way to do a JSON or to do a chunk on a JavaScript of on that. I guess I would… I’m waiting for Irene to publish that.

Mikey:  10:35
I was going to say print out a little key and put it up on your desk of what each symbol on LinkedIn means. So, you can know what they mean. It’s like a different language. Stenography. Is that what it’s called? Anyway, yeah. So, I like that. I also just like that’s them. So, I got to be honest. If you’re looking… if there’s a thousand Chrome extensions and paid places to get people’s phone numbers and email. No doubt. There’s a ton of them. Some might even more verifiable if that’s a word, but I suggest there’s two ways, two ways to get people’s contact information that I love. So you come across somebody on LinkedIn, you’re running a little bit low on messages. You’re like, I don’t know if I want to use a message on this one. You can go up to their URL on their public profile.

Mikey:  11:18
And I always go off their backslash. So if my backslash just said, MikeyWeil32 and that was my backslash with no symbols, no letters, no extra letters or numbers, then that’s probably going to be their Gmail account.

Mikey:  11:36
I like to tell people like 90% of the world has a Gmail that is first name dot last name. My name is pretty unique. So like, or not too… my name is pretty unique. So, my Gmail, even though it’s not, might be Mikey dot Weil at Gmail. So try out their Gmail, try out their backslash and plug that into Gmail, and if all four of those little symbols light up in the bottom, even better, if a picture lights up, then you know that that’s their email. If that doesn’t work, try ThatsThem. Try Looking for their phone number and email on ThatsThem. And another big thing I would say is if you find a new people search engine, White Pages, ThatsThem, anything like that, plug in your own name, and if your email and phone number that pulls up is accurate, take that as a hint that that’s a pretty good people search engine and start using that moving forward.

Brian:  12:28
All right. So Mikey, I just went ahead and went into ThatsThem because that is one that I haven’t used. I love the fact that it has the purchase price of my home. I actually… Okay, this is cool. I appreciate that. Thanks for that. Thanks for the… So we’ve got two takeaways so far, we’ve got the veterans on Indeed. We’ve got ThatsThem. Mikey, what else do you have to share that is actionable that somebody can use immediately today to bridge the divide or to jump the InMail?

Mikey:  13:06
That’s a great question. So, this might be a little bit of a stretch, and this also depends on where you work, what it’s like, all that good stuff. One thing I recommend is this is say you just started at your company or you’ve been there for a long time. Another great thing to do and to drive kind of referrals is talk to the other sources, talk to the recruiters, the hiring managers, and get them to kind of engage their first connections because they can get their emails and all of that. So, something I did at a company I worked at, I went around to all the sources, the recruiters, I even went around to some friends that were in benefits and compensation. I had them all export their LinkedIn databases, their first-degree connections and give them to me and I compiled them my first week there an Excel sheet of about 30,000 people.

Mikey:  13:54
And then I use that to source. So say I’m looking for full-stack developers, I use that Google sheet and I see, oh, Brian is connected to 60 of these people. I’m going to ask him if I can get, their email from him or I’m going to see if he’ll reach out or he’ll send them that free message on LinkedIn. So that’s another way to do it. And then also, work in your ATS, can’t recommend that enough, low hanging fruit and ATS, check everybody in your ATS.

Mikey:  14:21
I mean, if you weren’t going to company where you’ve already engaged most of that talent in that area, or you know that you’re working at a big company where you’d get a lot of applicants, cross-reference. You should cross-reference people anyway, in your CRM and ATS, but look them up in there because they might’ve applied six years ago and there’s their email and phone number. And then you don’t have to pay to reveal that on a different Chrome extension or website or service like that. Also high ritual has a good plug-in where I think gives you one boolean string for free a day and a couple emails or phone numbers for free. That’s another option.