Disconnecting

Patrick O'Malley has done an excellent job of explaining how to remove a connection. I think the self-deprecating humour is funny.

Leave a comment if you have any questions about linkedin.

The Dreaded "I don't know ...."

Normally in our house this is just my response to a question from my wife;

what do you want to eat? - I don't know
where do you want to go? - I don't know

You get the picture.

But; "I don't know" in LinkedIn has much bigger consequences.

In my early days of trying to expand my network, I started inviting everyone I could. I'd find a profile for someone who used to work at the same company and send an invitation. After all, we knew of each other. I'd see a profile with an email address and - you guessed it - I'd send an invitation. After all, recruiters want to be connected with potential candidates - don't they? Sometimes - no.

When you reach the magic number of "I don't knows", you get a nasty-gram from LinkedIn that indicates you've been restricted and asks you to confirm your agreement to the terms and conditions. Ouch. After agreeing, you get a message from LinkedIn that you've been unrestricted.

What if you get more "I don't knows" after that? Then what happens?

I don't know.

I certainly didn't want to find out, so I quickly withdrew a bunch of outstanding invitations.

I'm now much more careful about who, and how, I invite. I only invite directly those I know well - just like LinkedIn wants me to. Those I don't know so well; I "invite" outside of LinkedIn with just an email message.

Note that it's not until you reach the "magic number" of "I don't knows" that you get restricted, so it's a good idea to review your LinkedIn mailbox (sent view) to see if it's happening at all. This way you can adjust your invitation practices before LinkedIn sends the "nasty-gram".

Network updates

Rather than relying on opening the LinkedIn home page regularly to view updates on connections, status changes, profile changes, etc. it is possible to receive the updates via RSS.

LinkedIn does however recommend not using a web-based reader (ie. like Google Reader) for this.

See these instructions for installing RSS Feed Readers (for both Windows XP and Ubuntu Linux).

Profile Picture

I suppose I would have thought to post on this subject eventually, but Walter Feigenson has already done such an excellent job covering it on his blog in this post; How to add your picture to LinkedIn

My current picture doesn't meet all the recommended criteria I've read about (most notably it doesn't have a light background), but I'm going to stick with it for a while.

Being found, and misspellings

Adding email addresses
I hadn't thought about this aspect of LinkedIn before, probably because my name is easy to find. Randy Schrum's post; Be Found By Your Past “email” on Linkedin explains how it's important to include all the email addresses you can in your profile. Note that the addresses will have to be confirmed, so they need to be active and accessible.
The video he mentions didn't open for me, so here's the steps;

1. Login and click on Account & Settings
2. Under Personal Information, click on Email addresses
3. Type in the email address, and click on Add email address. The address will show up in the list as unconfirmed. A confirmation email will have been sent to the email address.
4. Log in to the email account, a message with the title; "Please confirm your email address" should be there. Note that you can go back to LinkedIn, select the email address and click on "Send Confirmation Message" again if needed.
5. Click on the "click here" link in the message, and then on "Confirm" in a new window that should open. You may be asked to log in to LinkedIn again.
6. That's it! There should be a "thankyou for confirming" notice on screen.
   

Adding common misspellings
My name may be uncommon, but it is commonly misspelled. To be sure people find me even if they misspell my name, I simply added a line like this to my summary;

Common misspellings; VanGameron VanGameran

Now when people search for me with a misspelling of my name, they still find me.

These tips are part of the passive aspect of connecting on LinkedIn; making sure that your profile has enough information for people to find you accurately.

The First Step to Personal Branding

If your name is very uncommon, then this advice can wait. But, if your name is common; now is the time to take action.

When your LinkedIn profile truly does replace your resume, the question you'll be asked won't be; "Can you send me your resume?", but; "What's your LinkedIn profile address?"

I'll have to spell mine, but I'll only need to spell "vangameren".

The common part of a LinkedIn profile URL is; http://www.linkedin.com

The unique part of the address is, in my case; /in/vangameren.

Here's the kicker; by default, LinkedIn gives you a long alpha-numeric address like "/pub/7/b76/99a"

Who's going to remember that? And if you're name is Tim Smith and LinkedIn has almost 2,000 people registered with your name, how is anyone going to find you? the real you?

The answer? Get your unique public profile name now. The more common your name, the more urgent this is! The unique name you choose will be the identifier of your personal brand. This is the way you will want people to find you online.

Are you convinced? I am, so much so that I'm going to change mine. I thought it was great that I was able to be the first one to grab vangameren for my profile, but that's not how I want people to search for me. My name is so uncommon that I haven't yet run across another Rick VanGameren in the world. When people Google "rick vangameren", they find me. That's the name that makes sense for me to use everywhere I'm online, so - effective today, even though I've already given quite a few people the address of vangameren, I'm making the switch.

You can find me at http://www.linkedin.com/in/rickvangameren

Ok, now - how do we make the change?

Log in to LinkedIn and click on "Edit My Profile"
At the end of the "Public Profile" link, click on Edit
At the end of the "Your Public Profile URL", click on Edit
Type in the value, and click on Set Address (if the address is already taken, you will be notified with the message; "This URL is not currently available")

Now if you'll excuse me, I've got some updating to do (changing all my references from vangameren to rickvangameren).