Find out what is important to the company. What do they believe in? What is important to them? What are they most proud of?

Secondly, find out who the key people behind the company are. What roles do they take on in the company? Then check out their individual profiles on Linkedin.

If you are comfortable in doing so, send them an invitation to connect on Linkedin and provide them with a reason that they might want to connect. Not the fact that you are looking for a job though.

If the company’s social media properties allow for posting comments, see how you can add value by posting replies to their postings.

Networking face-to-face with people in hiring positions in companies can be a little tricky, in that in most cases, their networking is restricted to events that with other members of the company.

There can be benefit in leveraging your connections to see if anybody knows anyone working at the company in question, or if they have any connections there.

If you are gutsy, you may want to contact somebody in the company for an informational chat, where you ask for the opportunity to pick their brain.

In business networking events, it can be helpful to ask people you connect with out right “Do you know anybody that works at ….?

I go into strategies such as these in greater detail in my book on job search strategies that work.

As originally answered on Quora.com.