For years, LinkedIn has made it easy for you to see who in your network knows the second or third degree connections you're trying to get in touch with and seamlessly ask them for an intro.
But when you have several people who could introduce you, how do you figure out which contact will be most likely to pay off?
LinkedIn's newest feature will help you do just that. The company announced this week that it's going to start giving more information about how the people in your network are connected to the people you want to know. So now instead of just seeing that you're connected to the hiring manager at that awesome company you want to work at through Adam and Sarah, you'll be able to see that Sarah only knew her in high school, while Adam worked for her for three years and got a stellar recommendation when he left.
How does this help you? Well, there's a good chance that a good referral from fantastic-former-employee-Adam is much more likely to get her attention than high-school-acquaintance-Sarah. And that means, it will be easier for you to build a meaning relationship with a stellar new contact.
If you can't see the new feature yet, don't fret: LinkedIn is slowly rolling it out to all English-speaking members around the world. Read more on the LinkedIn blog, and get ready to seriously up your network-building game.