This week, guest blogger and author Marci Reynolds provides an easy and effective way to utilize your IT skills and knowledge as a way to get your next IT consulting job.

Answering LinkedIn Questions can be an excellent way to showcase your IT skills, knowledge and expertise. This can be extremely helpful when you are involved in an IT job search, when you want to market yourself as an IT consultant or simply want to reinforce your online brand.

The concept is fairly simple. Any LinkedIn user can post a question and any LinkedIn user can answer. The person who posted the question gets notified whenever a new answer is listed. Then, once the asker has enough responses, they close out the question and rate which answer was “Best.”

The cool thing is, if your answer is chosen as Best, this becomes part of your LinkedIn profile and you advertise your expertise. For example, here is a snapshot from my own LinkedIn profile:

In addition, when you are visiting the Answers section, the Top Experts and Topic Specific Experts are listed and promoted.

The keys to success are targeting the question subject areas that best align with your areas of expertise and taking the time to provide a detailed, well thought out reply comment.

How To Start Answering Questions:

To access LinkedIn Answers go to the top of your LinkedIn home page, click on the More tab and choose Answers. You will arrive at the Answers landing page.

The questions are divided into 22 top level subjects, and many more sub topics. For example, there is a top level subject called “technology”, which has eight sub topics such as “web development” and “enterprise software”.

You can find questions in your target area by clicking on a top level subject area or by using the “advanced answer search” and probing by keyword.

If you want to answer questions on a regular basis, I recommend that you sign up for an RSS feed in your target area(s). If you are new to RSS, check out “How to read RSS Feeds” on CNET.  Look for the  symbol.

For a detailed tutorial on how to use LinkedIn Answers, visit the LinkedIn Learning Center, here.

Example Of How IT Recruiters Use Answers:

One of my business contacts recently shared a story about how his firm sourced a candidate through the Answers area. They were looking for a very specialized skill set, so they posted a question that directly pertained to the specialty and reviewed the answers. Ultimately, the person who posted the best answer was interviewed and was eventually offered a position.

Next Steps:

Using LinkedIn Answers is free, easy to use, and the only investment is your time. I recommend that you give yourself a personal goal to answer at least one question per week. Even if you answer just one, it could be the answer that gets you an interview or a new IT consulting job. What a fantastic ROI!

Join the Agile Advocates LinkedIn group today and start answering questions submitted by our members.

Author, Marci Reynolds, Reprinted With Permission