LinkedIn is popular with increasing numbers of people. There are more than 150 million individual profiles up there. Then there are the company pages. It’s a great place to be when you’re a professional or businessperson.
Most of us know that our profiles could be better. They could be doing a better job for us. In an ideal world we would all make time today to update our profiles (personal and company) and get them just so.
However, I live in the real world, which is an imperfect world. You probably live there, too. No one living in the real world has a lot of time, so we don’t do that updating anything like often enough.
That means we all need to work out just how well our LinkedIn profiles are working for us right now.
LinkedIn Jobs And Your Linkedin Profile
Yesterday, when I looked at my LinkedIn home page I saw all those updates from people in my network. I also saw one of those messages from LinkedIn about jobs I might be interested in.
Something in the headline made me take a look.
It was a management consulting post. That’s the right sort of job. That’s where I’ve spent quite a few years of my working life.
It was with Capgemini Consulting. That’s the right sort of company. I’ve worked under contract to several international consultancies, including one of the “Big Four” consultancies.
The job talked was for a Solution Lead, eCommerce and Transactional Marketing. That’s right, too. These days most of my time is allocated to helping businesses to make increased use of the online world to bring in more profits and more business. I train business owners to use e-commerce, mobile commerce and social commerce more effectively in bricks and mortar companies. Once again LInkedIn got it right.
The job also required the holder to build a team to deliver the solutions. Well, that’s spot on. I’m a people developer. My entire employed life was spent developing people and the training arm of my business is very strong.
I’ve also worked as a project lead on national projects and managed teams of consultants working to deliver change management solutions.
All in all the fit between me and this particular job is good.
However, there’s one thing that doesn’t fit.
I’m not looking for a job.
Let’s not worry too much about that. There are more important points to note.
LinkedIn is using the profiles we write to match us with jobs posted on the site.
What’s more, my experience shows that LinkedIn is not sending information about jobs that just don’t fit the experience, interests and activities that we write abot.
The fact that LinkedIn is getting things right in my case says a lot about the way I have constructed my profile.
What’s happening means:
- my headline (the most important part of the profile) contains the right keywords
- my summary of experience – which I have noted includes blue chip companies – is being used to match me with opportunities in blue chip companies.
- my speciality – helping offline businesses to cope with doing business via the online world – is being used to fine tune the matching process, so LinkedIn is taking note of my skills and specialisms.
LinkedIn Groups You May Like
There are other ways LinkedIn proves to you that your profile is helping your career and your business.
- Do you find that LinkedIn recommends groups you really would like to join?
- Do you find the groups are relevant to your interests and to your situation?
I do.
I don’t always join the groups that LinkedIn recommends. I have a rule that I only join as many groups as I can follow at any one time. I don’t see any point in being a disengaged group member. Sometimes I find that LinkedIn suggests a really good group to me or ones I had missed or just forgotten about.
I’ve joined three or four groups in this way and in all cases I’ve found that these are good groups to join.
Once again LinkedIn is getting the matching process right. The only way LinkedIn could achieve this is by using my profile to guide its suggestions.
A Simple Way To Check If Your LinkedIn Profile Is Working Hard For You
I like simple ways of doing things.
The simplest ways of doing things are strategies that don’t require you to do much work.
I check the stream of updates on my LinkedIn home page to see what LinkedIn is saying that might be of interest to me. I also read the LinkedIn Network Updates that come into my email inbox. These are very simple strategies.
That’s all I need to do to confirm that my LinkedIn profile is working hard for me and doing the right things to help me and my business to succeed.
Whilst LinkedIn is sending me what I consider to be relevant messages and updates, I know I’ve basically got my LinkedIn profile right.
What next?
Can you think of a simpler way of checking that your LinkedIn profile is a good profile?
Let me know in the comments.
If you find this post helpful, please share it. This simple advice is helping quite a few of our clients to use LinkedIn better. I’d like as many people as possible to be able to make use of this guidance.
LinkedIn And Margaret Adams
You can find me on LinkedIn at:
The Adams Consultancy Ltd is on LinkedIn too. Come over and follow us.
If you’re looking for a group to join on LinkedIn then my group, Marketing Success For Coaches, Counsellors and Therapists may be right for you.
It’s a growing group. I approved membership requests from two applicants this morning.
And, of course, if you’d like some help with writing that important LinkedIn profile, take a look at how we can help.
Do you want to develop a new perspective on your business? Sign up for our 100% Change updates to help you to reshape your business and become more successful one change at a time.
About Margaret Adams
[...] The simplest way ever to find out if your LinkedIn profile is working hard for you. [...]