Social Media – LinkedIn – Connections

What are connections?
Connections are people on LinkedIn who you have personally connected with instead of just following. The basic type of connection is a contact you know personally and who you trust on a professional level. On LinkedIn there are 1st-degree, 2nd-degree and 3rd-degree connections.

1st-degree – People you’re directly connected to because you have accepted their invitation to connect, or they have accepted your invitation. You’ll see a 1st degree icon next to their name in search results and on their profile. You can contact them by sending a message on LinkedIn.

2nd-degree – People who are connected to your 1st-degree connections. You’ll see a 2nd degree icon next to their name in search results and on their profile. You can send them an invitation by clicking Connect or contact them through an InMail or an introduction.

3rd-degree – People who are connected to your 2nd-degree connections. You’ll see a 3rd degree icon next to their name in search results and on their profile.

Why are connections important?
Having more connections is important as it means the PSIT page is more widely available to a larger network. Making connections is a key part of LinkedIn as a networking social media, having more connections is therefore very important. Connections are useful for growing, sharing and promoting our PSIT page, as well as our personal pages. Having these connections means that more people see our content and can interact with it.

How do we get more connections?
We can get more connections by reaching out to potential candidates through recruiting. We can do this when we have a new opportunity on the IT Recruitment Marketplace website, we can create a post advertising the opportunity, use LinkedIn search for candidates and make connections with those who we deem suitable. We can also share the PSIT page on our own personal profiles to get more connections from our own individual networks, or by posting and joining groups. We can also connect with people in groups too, or with people who like the same posts, or follow the same hashtags for instance.