7 Critical Issues Regarding LinkedIn (Part 4 of 7)

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?

1. 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.

2. 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; 

3. If you have a Premium account with LinkedIn, do not display any of the badges – especially the Job-Seeker Premium badge.

4. 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.  PowerNetwork^TM 1000 guarantees you will have over 700,000 2^nd-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!

7 Critical Issues Regarding LinkedIn (Part 2 of 7)

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.