Would it be weird to contact a hiring manager through LinkedIn?

Those people generally troll Linked-in for contacts. They won’t be at all surprised to hear from you in that way. I generally get about one or two contacts a week from head-hunters looking to pad their rolls.

I thought that what was what linkedin was for?

I don’t think contacting anyone on Linkedin is weird, because that’s what people are on the site for. People that don’t want to be contacted hide their profiles from the general public.

I noticed that you said “hiring manager” in your question, but “recruiter” in the body of the email. Recruiters will generally ignore you if they don’t have a position for you or if they position gets filled before you make it into the process, so following up twice is fine, but I would save the third follow-up (if necessary) for a month from now just to see if they have anything for you. If you don’t hear anything, take it as a no and move on. Recruiters are fair-weathered friends – when they need you, they will treat you like you’re the king of the world, but once they don’t… This is my experience, anyway. Probably different for those with very specific and in-demand skills sets, like developers, etc, since there is always a demand.

As for “hiring managers,” they should appreciate qualified contacts reaching out to them. When I had jobs open, I would post on Linkedin and never received a single message, meaning that I had to wait for the recruiters to send me resumes and they are typically over worked and don’t have the experience to find anyone other than those that have had the same role in the past.

Oops my mistake. I contacted a hiring manager and I also contacted the recruiter. I didn’t hear from the hiring manager in a week (no phone call returned) so I called the recruiter today.

Linkedin is for job networking. I would definitely use it that way. I have a number of professional connections on linkedin, but I’ve not been looking for a job since I became a member. I have no idea how I’d use it if I were looking.

Yeah. That was so helpful. Sorry I don’t know more about it. Interesting topic, though.

My cousin applied for a job at Amazon then contacted the manager on Linkedin. They recruiter her and she started on cyber-Monday. Go for it.

I would shows inititative what have you got to lose?