Issue #2: There isn’t an “off” switch
For the person who utilizes LinkedIn to advance their
career, sometimes LinkedIn can get in the way of their career – if they don’t make intentional adjustments to their
profile settings, group memberships, and LinkedIn activity habits when they are
new to a career position.
Ask yourself, if you started a new career position today,
what do you need to focus on? It’s
pretty obvious that early on in a new position - for your sake and your
employer’s sake - you need to focus on your new job.
However, if you continue to use LinkedIn the way you used it
when you were actively pursuing a new career opportunity there is a good
possibility you will be distracted by needless chatter and lose focus on
learning your new role. The InMails, group
updates, job opportunities, Pulse recommendations, and the omnipresent message
from LinkedIn “Advance your career – follow this company” will all be competing
for your attention.
Use LinkedIn Strategically
If you use LinkedIn strategically – dialing it up when you are
open to considering a job change and dialing
it down when you are staying put - LinkedIn will become an even stronger
tool for you to use.
This has been a rough winter. It seemed like I would never put my snow
shovel away, but eventually it happened.
The snow shovel had served its purpose and it was time put it away
(actually, I threw it away!).
If you remember to
“put LinkedIn away” after it has served its purpose, the next time you set it
in motion it will likely be for an intended step up in your career and not a
desperate job-seeking move.
What are the Solutions?
As an individual member there are a host of things that can
be done to draw less attention to your profile without taking the radical approach
and cancelling your account or dropping connections. Many of the solutions mentioned below can be
found in the “Privacy & Settings” section of your account. I will give you search strings that you can
use to zero in on the instructions found in LinkedIn’s Help Center.
Here are 10 solutions you may want to implement while you
are not considering new career opportunities:
1) Update your profile to show you have a new
career position: While LinkedIn is certain to notify you within days of the
update that you should consider opportunities with other companies, believe it
or not, most recruiters are not going to try to recruit someone who just started
a new position. Not only will it
discourage current recruitment attempts, you will be updating recruiters and setting yourself up for your next big career
move! (Search: “edit profile”);
2) Hide your profile picture: In this blog by Libby Kane, she quotes LinkedIn career expert Nicole Williams regarding the
impact of having a picture on a LinkedIn profile, “You’re seven times more likely to have your profile viewed if you have one
(picture)”. While I question if there
are valid statistics that would indicate that significant of a difference, if
you hide your profile picture, your profile should be viewed less often. (Search: “Settings for Photos on Profiles”);
3) Hide your public profile: By hiding
your public profile it won’t appear in searches made through public search
engines like Google, Yahoo!, Bing, etc. (Search:
“LinkedIn Public Profile - Overview and
Settings”);
4) Stop receiving InMail messages from members
who are not direct connections: You are somewhat in control of your profile. If you want to stop receiving InMail messages
from members who are not direct connections, you can! (Search: “Controlling
Incoming Messages”);
5) Leave groups that are primarily recruiting
related: It may be difficult to tell which groups are recruitment related,
but give it a try. Group names that
include terms such as: Jobs, Careers, Recruiting, etc. are in general the types
of groups to leave when you are in the “staying put” mode. You should be able to rejoin the groups when
you are passively or aggressively pursuing new career opportunities. (Search: “Leave a group”);
6) Stop receiving Group Digests and emails for
Discussion Updates, or decrease their frequency: You may want to continue to receive digests
from some of the groups, while not receiving any updates from others. LinkedIn makes it very easy to adjust your
settings for each of your groups. (Search:
“group digests”);
7) Remove your phone number and/or email address from your profile: To make it easy for recruiters and other hiring
authorities to contact them directly via telephone or email, many people will
put their phone number and email address in the Summary section of their
profile (BTW – that’s a great idea!).
When you start a new career position, remove them.
Also, you can delete your phone
number from the Contact Info Section of your profile. This information can only be viewed by your direct
connections, but you may want to remove it from your profile and add it
back to your profile when you are open to new career opportunities. Unfortunately, there is no way to remove your email address from the Contact Info Section. Your primary email address is automatically displayed. (Search: “Editing Contact Info Section of
Your Profile”);
8) Stop following companies: Following
companies is a great way to get updates on the companies you wish. During your early stages in a new career
position these updates are largely distractions. (Search:
“stop following a company”);
9) Turn off your Activity Broadcasts: This
is a no-brainer as it will decrease your footprint on LinkedIn. (Search:
“Hiding Activity Updates”);
10) Adjust your settings so that only you can
view your Activity Feed: Again, this
action will reduce your footprint on LinkedIn.
(Search: “Privately Looking for a Job”);
LinkedIn can also do a lot to help their members who have
just started a new career position without causing harm to their business
model. But, creating an “off” switch is not where they are focused, so we
shouldn’t expect LinkedIn to come up with any solutions in this area. However, one simple thing they could do would
be to send a congratulatory message to a member who just changed jobs and
include their own suggestions for “dialing it down” during the early stages of
a new career position.
Obviously for this LinkedIn issue, it is up to the
individual member to take action to minimize their LinkedIn distractions while
in the early stages of a new career position.
Such action will increase the chances of success in their new role.
Since this list is incomplete, please share your suggestions for the LinkedIn member who just
started a new career position.
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