How to make LinkedIn work best for you? ‘Treat it like a business’
How to make LinkedIn work best for you? ‘Treat it like a business’
Want to join the more than 40 million professionals around the world already networking on LinkedIn? It’s free and easy, and local users have plenty of advice about what to include and what to leave out when you set up your profile.
“I treat it like a business,” said David Moff, CEO of The HR Group. “I don’t put anything in my profile that I wouldn’t want for you to publish in the newspaper.”
While LinkedIn provides fee-based services for advanced users, it costs nothing to set up a basic account and profile. Simply go to www.linkedin.com, enter your name and e-mail address, create a password and hit the “join now” button. The site will walk you through the remaining steps.
“I wouldn’t include a lot of personal information about yourself,” said Chris Paul, who worked with the Reemployment Support Group at St. Paul the Apostle Catholic Church in Greensboro before using LinkedIn to find a new job in South Carolina. “I wouldn’t include a phone number or your date of birth. Leave that for Facebook, is my opinion. This is a professional network. Middle-level to upper-level (professionals) are using it. It’s strictly a business tool.”
So what should you include? Your “key strengths,” Paul said, along with your employment history, responsibilities and accomplishments.
“Be transparent,” advised Tommy Riggins, a co-founder of the LinkedIn group Linking Greensboro who has given several lunch-and-learn presentations about getting started on LinkedIn. “Be truthful. The thing about the Web is, whatever you’re putting out there is gonna be there forever.”
And while you don’t want to put a lot of personal information on LinkedIn, you should definitely include a picture of yourself, said Riggins, an account executive at Dynamic Quest in Greensboro.
“Don’t put a little kitty cat,” he said. A picture “makes you a real person. When people look at that, it’s not just static words. Now there’s a picture they can associate with that person.”
