How to leverage the new LinkedIn changes

What new LinkedIn changes? For some of you, you may not even be aware there are new LinkedIn changes. Perhaps you didn’t even hear that Microsoft is buying LinkedIn. The $26.2 billion deal isn’t supposed to close until later this year but I have seen many changes that I suspect may be signs of the new LinkedIn.

3 new LinkedIn changes

Privacy and settings

The first hint I had of the changes was when I was coaching a client on LinkedIn and we were looking at the privacy and settings. The old DOS-like look to the settings was gone. It has been re-engineered to showcase three distinct areas: Account, Privacy, and Communication.

Each of the areas has multiple settings, some of which that need passwords to be changed. This is probably related to the much publicized LinkedIn hack that stole some 12 million access codes. By the way, you should change your password if you haven’t done that recently and make sure it doesn’t match your other passwords.

Changing your password is a good practice but many people forget about LinkedIn, which leaves them vulnerable to attack. There are many new settings in this area that you may want to study them. Key points:

• The account setting controls the email addresses, phone number, passwords, and the third party settings as well as your LinkedIn subscriptions.
• The privacy setting area has the critical settings for your URL link for Linkedin that can be used on business cards or your resume (under the Edit your public profile). In addition, there is a control for sharing profile edits (set this to No when you do large edits so you don’t send them out to your full stream, and the profile viewing option which I suggest you leave on full profile.
• The communications area has a myriad of settings drilling down even deeper as you click details for email frequency. The communications area has been re-engineered. The re-engineering seems to be happening in many areas continually and they are rolling out the changes rapidly.

LinkedIn Jobs settings

• The jobs area has also been re-engineered and continues to be re-engineered.
  • The Preferences area looks and feels totally different. You set the preferences to trigger what jobs are suggested for you.
  • The Discover area is the launch pad for jobs that should fit your preferences.
  • Once you click on a job, you will find all sorts of new information. I now recommend LinkedIn Premium to my clients just because of the value in the jobs area. For example:

    • Competitive intelligence about other applicants

    • An inside look at Imperial State Realty Trust and its employees

    • Meet the team at Imperial State Realty Trust

LinkedIn Pulse

The internal blog feature for LinkedIn has a new look too. You don’t have a list of suggested posts on the Pulse sidebar anymore and there is no count to tell you the number of views.

I anticipate more changes and more tweaking until LinkedIn finalizes this wave of changes. If you only visit LinkedIn occasionally, you will find many new changes. My clients love that I take them through the back door, the front door, and coach them to fully use LinkedIn as part of all my resume packages. Most people who are casual users of LinkedIn struggle to stay informed and understand how the features all work.