Behind The Scenes of Your LinkedIn Profile.

Last week I wrote about LinkedIn basics and this week we go behind the scenes at LinkedIn to look at various settings that help to make you visible in the job market and help you find the jobs that are right for you.

"Open to Work"  I talked a little about this last week but here is some more detail on this important LinkedIn tool. It`s the blue tab below your Headline. Here you can indicate up to 5 job titles to which you aspire as well as Type of Work, Location Preferences, Availability (actively looking or casually browsing). When you go to save this section, you will be asked if you want this information to be available to Recruiters Only or All LinkedIn Members. If you are currently working, I recommend the former but if you are not working, I recommend the latter. Amongst industry experts this choice is much discussed. I recommend the All LinkedIn Members option because it places a small display label on your photograph that says, "Available for Work". Some people think that makes you look desperate. Other people (like me) think that it indicates to your friends and extended network that you are looking for your next position. Because Networking is an important ingredient in your job search, I recommend taking every opportunity to inform your network about your job search status. More about this later.

This is an important section because it communicates with the LinkedIn algorithms and uses this information to connect you with job types and people searching for candidates that are looking for particular job titles.

Skills

LinkedIn skills are important because they help people find you through searches. A lot of recruitment goes on within LinkedIn without there being advertising so people finding you on LinkedIn is an important thing to consider and the skills section helps here.

Interests

This section, at the bottom of your profile, including Influences, Companies, Groups and Schools. Read about these four subject areas in the help menu. By far the most important is LinkedIn Groups which provides the potential to link with colleagues from past companies, people within your industry, professional discipline, area of special interest or geographical area. Joining appropriate groups puts relevant information into your LinkedIn feed and points to connections which will further facilitate the networking side of your job search. There are more than 50 other settings (see Settings & Privacy just above the help menu), but we have covered the most important ones above. While you might want to go through and read all of them, the others I would pay additional attention to are: Profile Viewing Options – which, if turned on, indicates to someone if you have viewed their profile. Connections – you can choose whether people can see the names of your other LinkedIn connections.

Your LinkedIn Network Connections.

The way LinkedIn works, the more connections you have the more functionality you have within LinkedIn and, more importantly, the easier it is for other people to view your profile. So, in principle, it is good to have a lot of connections although I would be reluctant to simply accept everybody that wants to connect with you. It is better to reach out to and accept invitations from friends, colleagues, people from a similar industry or professional discipline or special interest groups. If you get an invitation that seems to have no logic behind why the person would invite you, then you might respond back saying something like " .... Hi and thanks for the invitation to connect. Can you let me know what value you believe we can bring to each other?" Most of the time, you will not get a reply which makes it fairly certain that the invitation was just a numbers gathering exercise for marketing purposes. You will find an immense amount of information and free guidance from LinkedIn experts who blog on the internet. These people will also, for a price, offer to do the complete renovation of your LinkedIn profile and your resume. For most people however, I think that the above guidance is sufficient for you to leverage this important asset in your job search. LinkedIn also has their own official blog blog.linkedin.com

LinkedIn Social Media. When you log on to your LinkedIn page, you see three panels: on the left is your own profile on the right is LinkedIn News. The largest panel in the middle is what LinkedIn calls your Feed, but I think of it as LinkedIn Social Media. Once you are satisfied with the content and settings adjustments you have made on your profile, participating in this part of LinkedIn is a more advanced step you can take to increase your visibility to your network, to recruiters and employment decision makers. Your Feed is a combination of different things including: Posts, Comments, and Likes from your first connections. It also includes advertisements and other things that LinkedIn thinks will be of interest to you through having observed your profile and activity. For guidance on how to adjust this Feed, indicating the things you like and dislike, go to the help menu and search " How to Customize Your LinkedIn Feed".

Your own contributions in terms of Likes, Comments and Posts (in that order) have increasing values as contributors to your visibility. If you comment on something and one of your connections (who you may not have spoken to for years) sees your comment, they might have a look at your profile and see that you are "Open to Work". And that person may be the very person who knows about a job that is right for you. This happens a lot and demonstrates how this Social Media part of LinkedIn can underpin your networking efforts. Given that posts are the most valuable, you might try to post information that you think will be of interest to your first contacts, periodically during your job search. There is no need to invent a whole new idea. You can simply make a comment on an article that you see on the internet and put the web address in your post. The point here is not to say something intellectual or witty. The point is to keep your name in front of your first contacts and others. Look in the help menu for guidelines on how to post.

Your First Post

Why not let your friends and extended network know that you’re out there looking for a job. You can do this in a subtle way such as the example below, or if you want to be more direct tell them about the job you were looking for and ask them to keep you in mind. Almost all of the LinkedIn experts say that put in your own photograph into a post increases its penetration enormously and I have seen that happen myself. So, put your shyness and reservations aside and go for it with an interesting, but not crazy, photograph of you.

After … years with XYZ I am leaving at the end of June. It has been a great ride and we have achieved a lot. I appreciate the camaraderie and support of the XYZ team and I hope that as I move towards new horizons, we won`t lose the friendships that we have made. Good luck to all.

That’s all for now  ….  Have a great week.

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The Mr Job Tracker Job Search Learning and Coaching Program. (Resume writing, interviews, everything your Job Search needs) Helping you to get the job you want .... faster. Mr Job Tracker (thinkific.com)

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