LinkedIn is the best known and worldwide used professional social network. You have a profile is very effective to develop and maintain a network of professional contacts and to offer extension “online” to your resume, available to all.
However, the use of LinkedIn is more subtle than Facebook or Twitter. It has some pitfalls that should be avoided to not hurt his career… Here are a few!
- Send Requests to Add People you Absolutely don’t Know
The purpose of LinkedIn is to connect to your business contacts, virtual or real. But if you send requests to add the users that you don’t know, you get bored, especially if you don’t take the trouble to send a personalized message.
Also, if you send a number and that all these people say they don’t know you, LinkedIn may even prevent you from sending further requests for additions in the future.
- Turn often to Update your LinkedIn Status
You’re not on Facebook or Twitter: LinkedIn is a professional networking site. If you “pollute” the wall of your contacts with dozens of posts a day or irrelevant information, some of your contacts will for sure you remove their relationships.
- Try to bypass a Business Application System
If a company has developed a system of on-line application, it is probably for you to use. It is therefore difficult to use LinkedIn to try to circumvent it by contacting employees of the company that you have never met, but who ask you to send your resume to the right person.
Because they know you anyway not, they are unlikely to help. In addition, you may annoy and it will not play in your favor.
- Lie on your Function or your Responsibilities
If your colleagues or your boss notice that you have exaggerated your responsibilities on LinkedIn, it will lose all respect for you. Worse, if a recruiter may check information from your resume with those of your LinkedIn profile, you instantly lose credibility.
- Neglecting Your Profile
If you send requests to add left and right, but your profile says more than just your name and function, your contacts will wonder why the hell you put them.
If you choose to use the site, use it properly – and that starts by creating your profile worthy of the name.
- Visit Compulsively Certain Profiles
Remember that some LinkedIn users can see who has viewed their profile. Nothing serious to consult from time to time, of course (they are there to be seen), but look at every day can make you look like a maniac.
- Use Groups to Try to Sell your Products
LinkedIn groups are a great way to share information with people with similar interests. Unless we do this in a group to the sale, you get bored the other members, if you use this space to promote your products or services.