Welcome back, LinkedIn


What I like about LinkedIn is that it’s a pretty honest platform, people are there to network, talk about shared interests, find or advertise jobs, no hidden intentions. After Karen Strunks preached about LinkedIn’s (see video) benefits I took on the challenge and returned to this platform determined to make the best of it. All the fuss can’t be about nothing.

Join Karen and others in a Google+ hangout talk about LinkedIn on Thursday 1 pm. You can register here. 

I don’t think LinkedIn ever left me, there were always those spammy emails telling me that I’m now connected to different people. Sort that out from Setting -> Email preferences -> Set the frequency of emails  

So I went back to LinkedIn and here are my first impressions: 

  • roughly the same clunky design
  • 99 messages in the inbox
  • 75 invites and a lot of them were from people I know
  • homepage news section is worth a look
  • mind your profile pic, it’s very important
  • People you may know works great if you sort by school / work place
  • Jobs and groups you might be interested in is spot on. I’m looking for social media positions in London and this is what I got.
You can refine your job search by company, date posted, location, industry, job function, experience level and, soon by salary too. Everything is very targeted, I only got industries relevant to my profile. Seems I was already part of some groups. Some event organizers seem to add the participants to a LinkedIn group. This sounds like a good networking opportunity. Groups are available on mobile and leaving a group is a pain, the leave groupbutton not being obvious at all.

With status updates I could better communicate what projects I am working on, what skills I’m perfecting and what interesting people I recently met.

Profile stats and being able to see who viewed your profile can be used as a good evaluation tool.

My profile might have been abandoned but I still had profile views. So while I’m working to build a professional online profile people still see a very dusty version of my profile. An embarrassing mistake not to be done again.

Network stats clearly show me I need to expand my local network if I want to find that social media dream job in London.
Also check out:
My approach is: 
  1. clean up my profile
  2. update my profile pic across all my profiles; I don’t have long hair any more, nor am I 19
  3. fill in my skills – very useful reflective exercise
  4. expand my network with London connections
  5. get recommendations
  6. use status updates
  7. set up job alert
  8. try out apps
I should write a follow up post in a couple of months and tell you how it all went and if LinkedIn worked out for me.
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