August 2022
Managing a planned break from the workforce on your LinkedIn profile.
LinkedIn is a great way to share your professional online presence. It’s important to keep it up to date, even if you are taking an intentional break from the world of work. Sometimes it can be hard to know how and when to share this information. Below you will find advice around these types of situations.
LinkedIn is all about the workplace, so you never want to share too much personal information. Examples of too much detail would be sharing about a major health issue of your own or a loved one and trying to start a family or becoming pregnant. These types of situations may keep you out of work for an extended period. You need to be careful about putting this type of information out there because it may be used against you by a future employer.
Some personal information that shouldn’t hurt your employment prospects down the road might be planning to move your geographic location, taking a break from work to attend school, or taking a sabbatical. These types of activities might make you more marketable to a potential employer down the road.
If you will only be away for a brief amount of time, I would not go into too much detail on your plans. A few months away from work is just a blip in the bigger scheme of your career. However, if you plan to be away for longer and you don’t plan to jump back into the job market right away, you can choose to share a little more about your circumstances.
The About section on your profile is a free form field which allows lots of space (2600 characters) to explain more about what you do and what motivates you. This can be a good section to utilize if you are having to explain time away from work. Without giving too much personal information, you can share what you have been doing while out of the workforce. If appropriate, you can address your reasons for leaving or returning to the workforce.
The Experience section is another place on your profile to address a gap. In this section, you will have to fill in the fields of Employer, Dates and Title. Even though these are the set fields, you can be creative with what you include. Even though this section implies it should be filled in with W-2 type work, there are many people who fill this section in with other types of experiences. You can include an entry that lists volunteering or consulting to show your current status. Beware of adding an entry that says you are “consulting” with few details to back it up. It may look disingenuous.
In some cases, it may make more sense to mention a gap after it has happened. For example, I took off a year to travel the Asian Pacific Rim in 2003. At that time, I did not include my travels on my LinkedIn profile. I feared my next employer would worry when I might plan to take off again. However, after many years, I decided to add an entry in my Experience section that accounted for that span of time. From September 2003 to October 2004, I have listed my employer as World Traveler and my title as Global Sabbatical. Having that on my profile allows people to see that my life experience has included learning about worldwide cultures. This has been helpful when working with global professionals and multinational organizations.
Whatever your reason for taking time away from the workforce, give some thought as to how you will reflect this on your profile to lay the foundation for when you plan to return to work.
April 2022
Use LinkedIn as a resource for salary data. As I’ve mentioned before, LinkedIn offers a resource for salary research that you can access by going to Linkedin.com/salary. You have to share your salary on an annual basis to receive continued access to their data. They do promise to keep your salary information private and encrypted. They also pledge that it will not display on your account and no one outside of LinkedIn can see it, including recruiters.
Besides their salary tool, there are tons of job postings on LinkedIn and some of them include salary ranges. While you don’t want to lean on job postings as the main method in your job search, they can offer real-time data points to consider as you collect information to establish a fair market rate.
November 2021
There are many ways to express your brand on your LinkedIn profile. Two important factors are the images and words you use to describe yourself. Below are five ideas to build a branded presence on LinkedIn.
1) Display a good headshot – As the saying goes, a picture is worth a thousand words, and this is also true for your profile picture on LinkedIn. To express your brand in a positive way, the picture should be up to date, in focus, and only of you from the neck up. To add aspects of personal branding, consider how you are dressed and what’s in the background. You should look approachable and professional.
2) Use a background image – This is the wide image that displays behind your headshot. You could brand yourself geographically by displaying a panoramic picture of a city skyline or a well-known nearby landscape feature. You could also create a word cloud using keywords related to your field. One idea that I implemented was a compilation of four images related to my business using canva.com. Anything professional is better than the generic default background. Note that keywords in this image will not be picked up by Search Engine Optimization (SEO).
3) Edit your Headline – This appears right below your name and is the most heavily weighted field on your profile. LinkedIn will default to show your current title, but you can edit this section of up to 220 characters. The keywords you employ can help you be found by SEO, but they can also give a quick indication of your professional skills to the human eye. You can list keywords related to your expertise using verbs or nouns (for example mine includes Global Career Coach and LinkedIn Expert). You can also share a tagline that speaks to who you are as a person. For example, my headline ends with, “Empowering mid-career to executive women”. I’ve seen other headlines that include humor (coffee aficionado) or share a passion (animal advocate). To jazz up your brand visually, add small icons in between words (such as a globe, a dollar sign, or a lightbulb). You can find a previous post on using symbols here.
4) Utilize the Featured section – Formerly called Media, this section is now bigger and allows you to highlight your previous posts too. For example, you could feature a blog you wrote on LinkedIn or a quick update you posted. This area displays as a fixed visual, near the top of your profile. You can also add other media by uploading a PDF, slideshow presentation, or other documents. Try adding URLs to articles you have published elsewhere online or where you have been quoted. Consider uploading links to videos, brochures, or professional pictures that showcase your brand.
5) Customize your URL – This is probably the quickest tip to implement. It should only take a few minutes if you don’t have a very common name. When someone opens a LinkedIn account, they are assigned a URL which becomes the internet address for your profile page. The assigned URL adds a series of letters and numbers after your name, but you can edit this. At a minimum, it’s best to remove the extra letters and numbers from the end of your URL. Having the URL show only your name will help you be found more easily. If your name is already in use, you will have to modify it in some way. You can add a middle name, maiden name, or a word that speaks to your profession. In my case, LinkedIn.com/in/paulabrand was taken so I created LinkedIn.com/in/paulabrandcareers. If you want to know more about why and how to change your URL, read this.
September 2021
This is a question I am often asked. In fact, I wrote about it last year. To save some time and repetition, I’m going to refer you to that post. Everything I wrote then is still true.
Funny enough, last September was also when we first announced a new LinkedIn Index so you can easily find old LinkedIn Tips of the Month on the BCM website. Well, this month, we added a plugin so now we can say it’s NEW and IMPROVED. Please check it out and let me know what you think.
July 2021
You can utilize LinkedIn to share your strengths. Here are five tips on how and where to do this.
1) The section right underneath your name is called the Headline. You have 220 characters of space to enter in this area on desktop and 240 on mobile. It is rumored to be the most heavily weighted field on your LinkedIn profile in terms of Search Engine Optimization (SEO). That’s why you should fill it in with keyword phrases for your industry that illustrate your expertise (examples: leadership, project management, human resources, executive, higher education, or sales). Add words that showcase your best assets, using the search terms you think a recruiter would use to try to find someone like you.
2) The About section comes next and it’s another place to share your talents. Thankfully, in this space, you have 2600 characters to utilize. Using fuller sentences, you can share a few highlights of your career. Generally, you don’t want to focus too much on any one employer. You can do that in the Experience section mentioned in #3. Here you can describe your superpowers and things that have been true about you throughout your work history. Are you the “go to” person for crisis management? Can you share a brief example of a time when you saved the day? Think about including these types of brief stories in the About section. You could even add short testimonials in this area because there’s so much space. It’s still good to weave in keywords for your areas of expertise, but this section should be conversational in tone and give some insight into your style and passions.
3) In the Experience section, beyond employer name and dates of employment, you can fill in a description. I thought they had increased the limit, but according to Eric Johnson, you still have 2000 characters to do so. Along with sharing a brief company profile, you can use this space to share some of your accomplishments to date in each role listed. It’s ok to list professional volunteer positions in this section too. Though there is a different section you can add to list volunteer positions, it’s not possible to tie recommendations to entries under the Volunteer section. Which brings us to number four.
4) Don’t forget to ask for recommendations, especially if you know you are planning to leave an employer soon. It’s much easier to ask for them and follow up when you have regular contact with that person, and it may take a reminder or two. You do need to be strategic. Ask for specific people to mention certain skills that you’re trying to highlight and that they have witnessed. Remember that you must be a first-degree connection with someone to recommend them through LinkedIn, so the first step might be to send them a personalized invitation to connect (here’s a post on why and how to personalize your invitation). Recommendations are probably not being scoured for data like some of the other sections, but it’s great for someone to see others speaking well of you. If you’re looking for a secret to earning recommendations, one good way is to start giving some to others.
5) The Skills section is yet another place to showcase your strengths on LinkedIn. It’s better for hard skills and areas of expertise because those are the types of words that people are using to run searches. This section is factored into the algorithms affecting search results. Not too many recruiters are searching LinkedIn using adjectives to describe softer skills such as creative, positive attitude, empathetic or work ethic. Those words would be good to add in the About section (see #2) but the Skills area is the place to list keywords that show your knowledge base. Appropriate words for this section could include broad areas of expertise (healthcare, international development, human resources, or capital financing), software critical to your profession (SAP, CAD, or Abode), or services you offer (career counseling, accounting, or massage). It is not uncommon to have words from your Headline and About sections repeat in this area. That can make your profile align well to the human eye and with algorithms. Once you add the right keywords to your Skills section, the second step is to make sure that the most important skills are listed in the top three. Finally, ask friends, family, and colleagues to endorse you for those skills. This may seem silly but it’s a matter of SEO. The more endorsements you earn for a certain skill, the higher you should rank on a search for that keyword.
Now you know of five ways to share your talents on this platform. If you are serious about knowing your gifts and sharing them with the world, LinkedIn is a great place to display them. Take a look at some of these areas on your profile and think about how you could let your light shine a little brighter.
May 2021
You can utilize LinkedIn to showcase and grow your leadership skills. Below are my top five suggestions for doing so.
1) To attract more of the right opportunities, use leadership as a keyword in your Headline, About, and Skills sections. You may also use words such as: supervisor, manager, authority, director, and leader.
2) Reflect volunteer leadership roles in your profile. You can put this information in multiple places. First, if it’s professionally related, you might add it in the Experience section. Second, there is a section called Organizations that allows you to add affiliations to groups. Here you can also mention your level of membership and/or any elected positions you hold or have held. Third, you can add a Volunteering section. The biggest downside to this category is that people can’t write a recommendation for the work you list as a volunteer. For some reason, LinkedIn only allows people to tie recommendations to an entry within the Experience and Education sections.
3) An image is worth a thousand words! Make sure your profile picture is not a selfie.
Fit the part. Dress as an authentic leader. Look confident and approachable.
4) Reach out to other female leaders. Search LinkedIn using specific keywords to find women leading in other geographic locations, advocating for a similar issue, or working in the same industry.
5) If you strongly believe in a cause, add words to your profile that express this to attract people who are aligned to a similar mission. One of my colleagues adds the words Animal Advocate to her social media profile’s, so others know that is a big part of who she is.
I had one more idea, but it’s disappeared. There used to be a way to add an expression of interest to join a board of directors. I know I have seen it before, but they must have taken it away because after searching high and low, I could not find it. If you have seen it lately, please let me know where you found it.
March 2021
To help women leverage LinkedIn for higher visibility and career growth, this month, I will share tips for enhancing your presence on this website, along with LinkedIn research reports related to gender.
First, ensure you have a profile on LinkedIn. Yes, it’s a social media site, but it’s not like the others. LinkedIn is only used for professional purposes. If you’re serious about your career, you need to be there. Opportunities can’t find you if people can’t find you.
Second, use LinkedIn consistently over time, not only when you are seeking a new job. The old saying to “dig your well before you’re thirsty” says it all. This platform can help you build visibility and grow your network throughout your career. Create a profile and check it on a regular basis to ensure it’s up to date. Even if you are out of the workforce for an extended period of time, you should still attend to your profile. You can read more about this point in a previous post.
Third, LinkedIn works on data. The more information you give it, the smarter it gets, and the better it will work for you. In 2017, LinkedIn’s first economic graph report found an interesting discovery.
“One team analyzed whether male and female graduates of top-ten MBA programs from 2011-2016 promoted themselves equally on their LinkedIn profiles. The team discovered that women and men were comparable in the number of skills and honors they included on their profiles, but that women were less likely than men to include job descriptions or summaries.”
To get the most out of LinkedIn, you need to complete the About/Summary section. This is an important area for Search Engine Optimization (SEO). It’s also the best place to showcase yourself in an authentic way. This is one of the few sections without a set format, so you can be more creative with content. It’s a great place to describe what makes you different from others with similar qualifications, to share qualities that have been true throughout your entire career, and to explain why you are passionate about what you do. You should also consider sharing key career accomplishments here, along with the types of problems you enjoy solving. You may share personal information such as athletic pursuits, hobbies, or volunteer activities if they have some professional relevance. However, I suggest steering away from anything too personal, such as your marital status, your familial status, or health issues. Sharing this type of private information could get you screened out of potential opportunities.
Below are additional ways to help your profile be found on LinkedIn:
- Customize your LinkedIn URL. To find out more about this, read my previous post on the topic.
- Include a profile picture. LinkedIn states that your profile is 21 times more likely to be viewed if you have one. Make sure it is in focus and doesn’t include anyone else. It can be from the neck up and should be taken by someone else. I would caution against trying to look sexy unless this is part of your brand.
- Fill in your experience section with relevant past jobs, volunteer experiences, and short-term projects.
- Have a minimum of 50 1st degree connections, which is necessary for the algorithms to work well.
- In the Skills section, share at least ten skills, and make sure that the three most important are at the top. Ask friends and colleagues to validate those leading three skills, so they have the highest number of endorsements.
- Make sure you use the right keywords for your field and ensure they are mentioned in your Headline, About/Summary, and Skills sections. This previous post shares tips on creating a powerful headline.
Other ways women can leverage LinkedIn to develop their careers:
- Join LinkedIn groups to expand your network and learn about industry trends.
- Write a LinkedIn blog post to increase your credibility and visibility.
- Utilize LinkedIn to research and identify people you want to get to know.
- Add media to your Featured section to showcase your work. This could include PDFs, videos, or links to publications where your name has been mentioned.
If you seek more data on women and how they use LinkedIn, check out the links below. In 2019, LinkedIn published two interesting research reports related to gender and LinkedIn:
One focused on how words have a different effect on men and women.
Another report highlighted the contrast between women and men and how they find jobs on LinkedIn. It included these thought-provoking results:
“The data shows that when recruiters are searching for candidates and they see a list of men and women, they tend to open men’s LinkedIn profiles more frequently. However, after recruiters review a candidate’s profile, they find women to be as qualified as men and reach out to both genders at a similar rate… The good news is that when women do apply to a job, they are 16% more likely than men to get hired. In fact, if the role is more senior than their current position, that number goes up to 18%.”
January 2021
There are so many ways to use LinkedIn (LI) to network. I have shared five practical ideas below. Make a resolution to take action on one of these this month.
- Think of someone you know personally but are not connected to on LI and send them an invite (try to remember to add a friendly note).
- Share a post to thank someone publicly. Even better, “tag” the person to ensure s/he is notified. For example, if I am logged into LinkedIn and type this post, “@KarenChopra is such a motivational colleague. Thanks, Karen, for your inspiration,” the tagging feature with the @ sign prompts the LI system to notify Karen about the post.
- Do you see that a friend of yours is connected to someone you would like to know? Ask your friend to send an introduction to both of you as a message through LI.
- Message a 1st-degree connection and ask them if they would like to have a catch-up call in the new year.
- Ask someone in your LI connections for an informational interview to learn more about an organization or a role that intrigues you.
Before reaching out, you may need to do a little research to determine who you want to approach. The following three tips can help you get started.
- Search by keywords or keyword phrases using the main search box on the top left side of every LI page. Keywords can be first or last names (e.g., Paula Brand), companies (Microsoft), titles (accountant), or industries (international development).
- Look at the members of any LI groups you have joined. Are there individuals you would like to get to know better?
Use the Alumni feature to find fellow graduates who might have a connection to your industry or target industry. There are many ways to access the Alumni tool, but the easiest is to go to your profile page and click on the name of the school you attended. Another way is to log in using www.linkedin.com/alumni. Please note that for this feature to work, you must have the institution listed on your profile. If you want more details, this post by the Muse explains more about the Alumni feature.
November 2020
I’m excited to say that this past summer, I was invited to a webinar run by LinkedIn staff for career professionals. At this event, they shared resources, data, and new features with a focus on helping job seekers. For this month’s Tip of the Month, I will relay what was shared that day.
First off, if you didn’t know, LinkedIn has been on a mission to build an Economic Graph that maps a digital representation of the world’s economy They have a related portal that provides a variety of analyses and reports including their Workforce Confidence Index. There is a wealth of data related to today’s world of work in these two places.
During the webinar, the presenters shared evidence connecting LinkedIn profiles to positive outcomes:
- Your profile will receive 21 times more views with a picture
- If you have at least five keywords in your Skills section, you are 27 times more likely to have your profile viewed by others
- 87% of recruiters agreed that skills listed on a profile are a “critical factor” when sourcing candidates
- You are 30% more likely to get hired through LinkedIn if you have skills on your profile
Specifically, for job seekers, LinkedIn teamed up with Microsoft to provide a variety of new features. This portal connects you to its three highlighted offerings:
- Free learning on job search topics
- Interview preparation tools that offer AI powered feedback on specific interview answers
- Free learning tied to jobs that are currently in-demand
Other enhancements to assist job seekers in landing the right opportunity include:
- LinkedIn now tags remote jobs so you can narrow your search using this filter (the number of remote jobs listed on their site increased 155% from March to July)
- To save time and focus your efforts, you can target companies that are actively recruiting and urgently hiring and filter jobs to identify those using LinkedIn’s “easy apply” process
- You can take professional skill assessments and display your results. So far, they seem limited to technology skills (for example Adobe software and AutoCAD)
- An “Open to Work” badge is available to publicly display that you are open to opportunities. They said they have been getting a great response from employers about this new feature. I think I’ll need to see how it plays out as, I’m not sure that plastering your availability is going to work well for job seekers.
Finally, there are two new features that are only available on the mobile app and not specific to job search. One offers the ability to have your name be spoken out loud so others can hear how to pronounce it. Another allows you to post stories using images and videos.
I truly appreciated being invited to this webinar and I hope that it might happen again in the future. It’s my hope that you benefit from these features so please try them out and see which might help you.
September 2020
Should you add your résumé to your LinkedIn profile? This is a question that comes up often so let me share my thoughts. My short answer is no. The main reason is customization. If you are using a résumé effectively, you are adapting it (slightly or greatly as appropriate) to each individual opportunity.
If you are applying for mostly accountant type roles, you probably don’t need to make major edits each time. However, you will still want to reflect any specific qualifications. For example, if you don’t normally include your excellent knowledge of Excel on your résumé but one job opening asks for experience with that software, you might want to make a point to add “Advanced skills with Excel” somewhere on that version.
That’s only one example but trust me, you shouldn’t post a résumé on LinkedIn. In case you’re thinking of a workaround, it’s also not a good idea to upload five different versions of your résumé to appeal to as many audiences as possible. That will make you look odd at best, and at worst desperate and confused.
The best strategy is to develop a warm and compelling LinkedIn profile. At minimum this would include: a decent picture, a keyword rich headline, a useful and conversational About/Summary, and ten skills that are on point with some information under experience and education. Your goal is for someone to come across your profile and want to reach out to ask for a résumé. At that point, you can ask more about the opportunity and tailor your résumé accordingly.
There may be some unique situations where it’s helpful to have your résumé on your LinkedIn profile, mainly if you are constantly asked for it. For example, a consultant who is regularly asked last-minute to provide a résumé for a contract or a speaker who is often asked for background information. In those cases, it might be OK (but even then, for branding reasons, I would suggest a landing page on your own website). For most of us professionals, adding a résumé to your profile will only limit your chances of being sought after for an opportunity. So next time you are thinking about it, consider instead adding any type of portfolio work, media, PDFs, videos, or links to content but please, don’t add your résumé to your LinkedIn profile.
July 2020
For an effective online presence, it’s important to edit your LinkedIn URL and personalize it. I’ve shared this tip many times before, but LinkedIn often changes the exact steps so I’m re-visiting this topic. I recently posted an updated blog post on why you should do this, and I created my first explainer video walking you through the steps on the desktop version. The video is less than five minutes and you can execute the task in a few short minutes too. Also, this link to the LinkedIn Help Center explains how to do it on desktop and mobile (but I have to admit that I tried to follow the mobile directions and couldn’t get it to work).
May 2020
Maybe you have a little more time on your hands these days? Or maybe you’ve been deemed essential and are busier than ever seeking resources for your work? Maybe you are in job search mode? Regardless of your current situation, you may need to seek out certain people right now and it never hurts to grow your network. LinkedIn is a great way to accomplish these tasks and I’ll suggest three easy ways to get started.
1) Search Alumni Pages – These pages offer incredible data, but most people don’t know they exist. Take a moment to see for yourself. Access this feature by going to your school’s LinkedIn page (most schools have a page as do most large companies). You can search for it by name or just click on the school listing on your own profile (for this to work, your alma mater must be included in the education section of your profile).
When you land on the school page, on the left you will see some options. Click on the word Alumni and then you can search by keyword and filter by year of graduation. For example, I can see that there are 28,000+ alumni from the University of Baltimore on LinkedIn. When I search for the words “career counselor” and limit the years of graduation from 1996-2001, it narrows down to 4007 names. I can see where these people live by city, where they work by company name, their role, what they studied, what they are skilled at, and how we are connected. Pretty powerful, right? Think of a way you could reach out to fellow alumnus to connect with someone in your industry or offer a resource.
2) Play with the Advanced Search Filters – Besides typing a name in the main search bar at the top left of each page, you can also run advanced searches using filters. To access filters, first-run one search for a person, and then you can select the words All Filters to access the full selection. Within the People section, you can filter by many things. Some of these include degree of connection, location, current/past company, industry, first name, last name, title, and more. This can be useful if you are in job search or sales and want to track down a specific level of employee in a targeted industry. For example, you could search for all presidents and CEOs of healthcare companies located in California.
3) Review LinkedIn Suggestions – The third way to grow your network is the most passive but a good place to start if you are not sure where to begin. You can access the people LinkedIn suggests as possible connections for you. The system guesses based on the data in your profile and how you might be connected to others through common connections (people, employers, and schools). The more data you share in your profile, the more likely LinkedIn will make appropriate suggestions.
To find where this information rests, click on My Network on the main menu bar. Underneath the invitations waiting for you, LinkedIn will give suggestions of people you may know. If you see someone who you want to connect with, don’t click on the word Connect here (because a generic invitation will automatically be sent). Click on the person’s face or name to go to their actual profile. At that point, click on Connect and you will have an opportunity to customize the invitation (this is a best practice on LinkedIn). I wrote about how to customize your invitations last May so if you need more help with that, read here.
Thanks to Elisabeth Sanders-Park for this idea of being able to access all of the past BCM LinkedIn Tips of the Month on my website.
March 2020
There are two ways you can use LinkedIn to prepare for a salary negotiation. Both tips provide potential data points that you can use for benchmarking and market research.
1) The most straightforward way is to access LinkedIn’s salary feature. As a quick refresher, this was rolled out in 2016 and is available in the US, UK, and Canada. It’s accessible to you for one year “for free” but there is a non-monetary cost. To collect personalized research, you must provide your own salary to LinkedIn annually (they promise your salary will not be shared or displayed publicly). I have written about it in past issues of this newsletter in November 2017 and April 2018. Since it’s been a while, and this issue is devoted to salary negotiation, I thought I’d provide a reboot.
If you’re interested in taking advantage of this feature, here’s how to submit your salary to get started.
2) You could also browse job postings on LinkedIn. Since some job advertisements mention salary information, this can be another way, though it is more difficult and less accurate. First, it’s harder to find the information because many employers don’t post salaries so you must browse through mahttps://www.linkedin.com/help/linkedin/answer/73514/submitting-your-salary-data-to-linkedin?lang=enny postings to find a few data points. Second, the salary shared is what’s posted, not necessarily what the company ends up paying the final candidate. Even though this can be cumbersome, if you’re not having luck in other places, this is one more way to gather numbers.
January 2020
In light of the interviewing theme for this issue, I’ll share some easy ways to utilize LinkedIn for interviewing preparation. Once you have an interview lined up, use the website to research the company and the people who might be interviewing you.
When you are invited to an interview, it’s always good to ask if they can share with whom you’ll be meeting. Even if they can’t give out a name, this will give you an indication of whether it’s with one person or a panel (which can help you get mentally prepared for the appropriate setting). If they do give you a name or two, you should definitely try to find out more about the people before entering the room. LinkedIn can be a great way to do that.
Enter each name in the main search bar on the top left corner of the site to see if you can find the interviewer(s) on LinkedIn. Once you get to their profile pages, see if you have anything in common with the people and make notes for later. Try to work this information into the interview to build rapport (without sounding creepy). Sometimes it might make sense to just fess up and share that during your interview preparation, you looked them up on LinkedIn and saw that you both like to volunteer for local non-profits. They’ll likely be more flattered and impressed with your research than worried about you being an online stalker.
You can do the same thing to gather information about the company. On the main search bar, type in the company name. If they have a presence on LinkedIn, their company page should come up in the results. From their page, you can see company data, such as the number of employees (along with how many are on LinkedIn). Most importantly, LinkedIn will tell you if you know anyone who works there! It also directs you to their main website, provides other organizational details, and allows you to follow the company page (which means that their updates will be included on your home page stream).
So next time you have an interview, give LinkedIn a try for some research and preparation. Feel free to let me know how it goes.
September 2019
Since Microsoft bought LinkedIn, they have been integrating features and one is called Résumé Assistant. You may not know it, but unless you changed your LinkedIn security setting once the feature was added, you have given permission to share the job description content from your profile with Microsoft Word users. It doesn’t show individually identifying information, but it still seems a little creepy to me. If it does to you too, read on to adjust the setting.
To remove your permission for this feature, follow these steps when logged into LinkedIn. Click on the drop-down arrow next to Me (along the top, black menu bar). Then, scroll down and click on Settings & Privacy. That will land you onto the default Privacy page. Scroll under the first section (titled How Others See Your Profile and Network Information) down to the last option (titled Microsoft Word). Click on Change and set it to No (the toggle will display gray if your setting is No and green if it’s Yes).
The screenshot shared has the setting set to No.
I do see a positive side and usefulness of this feature. It could provide data to help you draft your résumé in Word. Though I don’t recommend using anyone’s content word for word, it can help rattle your brain to get some of your own ideas to start flowing.
If you want to access this feature in Word, go to Review and then click on Résumé Assistant. A pop-up box appears. The first time, you must click on Get Started. Then you add a role (required) and/or industry (optional) to help it pull appropriate examples. The next time you access, it remembers the last role selected.
The screenshot shares two search results for career counselor.
Take a moment soon to check and change your LinkedIn setting and next time you’re in Word, play around with seeing the feature from the user end.
