LinkedIn Tips: How to make sure your LinkedIn profile is read

When you are wondering why you aren’t getting the stellar results everyone promised, you hunt for the key LinkedIn tip that will change your LinkedIn experience.

Are you sure you know your settings?

Did you know that there are easy things that people often forget?

LinkedIn Tips: Realize settings in LinkedIn change often, sometimes daily. As a professional who conducts LinkedIn training regularly with my clients, I notice settings you may not even know exist.

LinkedIn Tips: LinkedIn just added an “Ad” category to Settings

This is very new. I saw it for the first time when doing research for this article. If you want to control your privacy, you might want to check out this all new tab.

What else are you missing?

For example, many people miss the setting under Privacy that asks who can see your last name?

In this age of privacy, you might be inclined to select “Use First name last initial” but that guarantees no one will find you in a search.

Right Answer? Set this to full name – First and Last name. You want hiring managers to find you.

LinkedIn Tips: Make sure you include an email

This LinkedIn Privacy setting just changed. I knew it changed but I didn’t fix my settings. My setting said 1st-degree connections.

Your first-degree connections can also message you.

What about the hiring manager? Are you making it too hard to find your email?

Make it easy.

LinkedIn Tips: Set your photo to public

You don’t really want to appear as a gray box, do you? That’s what happens when you set your privacy on your photo to only connections. Make sure your visibility is set to the public.

Perhaps you read that your profile is 21% more likely to be looked at if you have a photo. You can find tips on how to improve your photo here. The photo isn’t just for people who already know you. You are hoping people who have the right job or opportunity for you will see your photo too.

To use LinkedIn effectively, you need to make sure you are visible.

How do I know how to best use LinkedIn?

As this brief tour of a few settings shows, there are many options in the privacy and settings area of LinkedIn. When I designed my resume packages, I insisted that we put LinkedIn in the Essential package. I consider LinkedIn critical to today’s job search.

My LinkedIn training has helped those people who used LinkedIn for years. I take a personalized look at what your goals are in your job search to make sure the settings work for you.

Every one of my clients gets a personalized tour of LinkedIn’s settings before we write their LinkedIn profile to best meet their goals. Just as I believe that there is no one-size-fits-all approach to resume writing, create a LinkedIn profile as individual as you are.

If you are ready to start looking for a new role, hoping for a promotion to the next level, or just want to be ready for the next opportunity, let’s talk!