How to Find Dietetic Preceptors Using LinkedIn
One of the perks of a distance dietetic internship is the opportunity to work with dietitians that most closely align with your interests. While it can take some work to secure sites, we will cover our top tips on how to find dietetic preceptors using LinkedIn.
In first part of this series, we will cover direct messaging, cold messaging and how to discover the email address for potential dietetic preceptors.
Before you discover the best strategy to secure preceptors, make sure that you review our post on how to Create an All-Start LinkedIn Profile.
Now that your LinkedIn profile has a professional photo, updated experiences, work samples and endorsements from past employers and coworkers, you’re ready to start networking!
Direct Messaging on LinkedIn- Should you do it?
Before we dive into tips about how to find preceptors, let’s talk about whether or not you should direct message strangers from LinkedIn. This topic is controversial so let’s talk about it.
If you’re not already connected with the individual, you won’t actually be able to send them a full message. You’ll have to request to “connect” with them first and you can attach a short note with the request.
If you want to direct message strangers without connecting, you’ll have to pay for a Premium account, which may or may not be worth the cost. Many of these message appear as Spam and might not be viewed by the potential preceptor. Luckily, they do offer a free 1-month trial of LinkedIn Premium, so if you choose to go that route, you’ll be able to send messages to anyone.
While direct messaging has its place, we recommend it as a second approach. We’ll come back to this in a bit.
Capitalize on LinkedIn to find names and then use email
Our top strategy is to use LinkedIn to find the name of the individuals that could serve as preceptors and then do some sleuthing to figure out their email address.
Did you know that most companies have the same structure for email addresses? Once you figure out the structure such as firstname.lastname@businessname.com, you can usually guess the email address of the individual that you want to contact.
There are also websites that you can use to help generate the email (Google Search: Email Structure Finder).
If this is taking too long, you can also try calling the organization and asking to speak to the person! This might be faster and more effective than sending an email or asking to speak to “the dietitian”.
What is cold messaging?
If you aren’t finding positive leads, then move onto cold messaging preceptors with LinkedIn.
Cold messaging is when you “connect” and send a quick message with the request. You will be restricted to 300 characters, so make sure that you are concise and to the point. Introduce your name, the rotation specifics (ex.clinical for 4 weeks) and a reason why you want to rotate at their facility. You will only have one chance with this message, so make sure it is professional!
Now that we've covered the strategy on how to find preceptors on LinkedIn, let's cover exactly how to reach out to preceptors.
If you’re like most nutrition students and dietetic interns, you feel a little uncertain about what exactly to see when reaching out to a potential preceptor.
Don’t worry- we have you covered!
Check out our next blog post:
How to reach out to potential preceptors for a dietetic internship
Check out some of our other posts on securing preceptors.
How to Reach out to Dietetic Preceptors
Networking Strategies to Secure Dietetic Preceptors
[…] post is part II of our series. Check out our first post Finding Dietetic Preceptors Using LinkedIn. And before you get started make sure that your profile is in top shape using our steps on how to […]