Issue #4: If members aren’t careful, their LinkedIn activity
could cost them their job
So, you just had a meeting with your boss. The tone of the meeting was rather cold and
you left the meeting questioning if you should remain with your current
employer – or have the opportunity to remain.
The terminology he used was not direct, but you got the feeling your
time was limited and you should start considering new career opportunities.
Fortunately, you have a LinkedIn account. You haven’t used it much – you’ve been very
happy with your job and saw no reason to keep it up to date, or build your
network. Since you haven’t used it much
you are also unfamiliar with how it works – what information gets shared, and
with whom.
You shrug your shoulders and say to yourself, “I need to
update my profile, join groups and grow my network”.
You start sending invitations to all sorts of people you
know and you think to yourself “why didn’t I do this before – my network would have
already been built?”
You also join some groups on LinkedIn. One of the groups you decide to join is all
about finding a job, so you decide to hide that group from your profile. You are glad you remembered to hide it.
You have taken action on LinkedIn and you congratulate
yourself. You already have an interview
set up and more people are reaching out to you.
This LinkedIn thing is working well for you!
The next week your boss calls and says he’d like to meet
with you to discuss some things that are happening at the company. Since you have other companies expressing
interest in you, and you think you are doing a good job in your current role, you approach the
meeting with confidence.
As you meet with your boss, your stomach turns, and your
facial expressions become blank. It
turns out that you are directly connected to your boss on LinkedIn. The last meeting you had was a test to see
how committed you were to the organization.
He noticed your activity on LinkedIn. as you went from 25 connections to
271 in the matter of one week.
Since your Activity Feed and Activity Broadcasts are turned
on, your boss has been notified that you recently connected with a number of
recruiters.
He even knows you joined a group that is all about finding a
new job – since you are connected to him and he belongs to the same group (for
spying purposes) you weren’t able to hide it from him.
Unfortunately, you didn’t know that cuts were coming and
your boss was looking for loyalty. You
are the first one out the door.
Hopefully, the situation I just described hasn’t happened to
you, but similar situations have happened to others – many times.
LinkedIn is a great tool for advancing ones career. Unfortunately, it is complex and very, very
public.
Like most things, the strength of LinkedIn is also its
weakness. The very public nature of
LinkedIn, and other social media outlets, gives you exposure that wasn’t
dreamed of 10 years ago. Like we have
seen in the example above, with that exposure there can be danger.
You have to understand the dangers of LinkedIn to use it
effectively.
What are the
solutions?
Using LinkedIn you have to accept a certain level of risk - risk
that is worth the reward if you are aware of the dangers and address them
properly.
LinkedIn is what LinkedIn is. The only way members can benefit from
LinkedIn is if it remains a very public website. LinkedIn currently provides some features
that help minimize the risk – the ability to turn off Activity and Broadcast
feeds, hide connections and hide groups.
Let’s not expect anything more out of LinkedIn to help keep your job
search private.
What can an
individual member do?
- First of all, don’t connect directly with your boss. For some, it is tempting to send an invitation to connect to your possible future employer or current boss. If you aren’t connected to your boss, don’t; If you are connected to your boss, take the precautions discussed below AND consider discussing with your boss why it might be better for both of you to not be connected, and drop the connection.
- Take advantage of the features Linkedin offers to minimize your activity footprint:
·
Turn off Activity and Broadcast feeds;
·
Hide your connections;
·
Hide certain group memberships;
- If you have a Premium account with LinkedIn, do not display any of the badges – especially the Job-Seeker Premium badge.
- Reaching 500+ connections
as soon as possible is key to hiding your activity. As in the example above, aggressively adding
connections can signal your interest in other opportunities. Until you reach 501 connections anyone in your network can find out
exactly how many connections you have, and can track the growth.
Once you reach 501 connections, LinkedIn no longer displays the exact
number of connections you have and simply shows “500+”. If you have hidden your connections, no one
knows how many connections you have, so you can freely add connections without
drawing attention.
Of course, if you decide to not aggressively
add connections you may be hurting yourself by possibly being “out-of-network” to the very person who may have a
career-advancing opportunity.
The four safest times to aggressively add connections to exceed 500 connections
are:
·
When you are unemployed;
·
When you have resigned from your current
position, but have not started your new position;
·
If you are lucky enough to still be in college,
build it now and have it for your entire career!
·
Almost anytime, if you can quickly exceed 500
direct connections;
What can MaxOut LI
do?
We provide a solution that takes LinkedIn members far beyond
500 connections – quickly. PowerNetworkTM 1000 guarantees
you will have over 700,000 2nd-level
connections within 14 days! It’s a
100% money-back guarantee and no one has requested a refund.
You will be “in-network” to virtually every U.S.-based
recruiter who uses LinkedIn. Don’t wait
and you can take advantage of our current 50% discount using the promo code “EXPLODE”
when you checkout.
Hopefully by employing these common sense tactics you can
make a successful career transition without signaling your current employer
that you are entertaining other offers!
Please share your stories!
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