LinkedIn Gives You the Option to Hide, but Why Would You? 6 Reasons to Go Public with Your LinkedIn Profile–Part 2
LinkedIn Gives You the Option to Hide, but Why Would You?
6 Reasons to Go Public with Your LinkedIn Profile–Part 2
To follow on the earlier post with three key reasons to go public with your LinkedIn profile, this article should allay your fears about sharing the connections you have built over the years. Read on for three more reasons you should open your LinkedIn profile for public views.
4. Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile
You can choose to be completely anonymous, partially identifiable by industry and location, or fully public. For LinkedIn power users, likely your market as you participate in an executive job search, hiding some or all of your profile can be catastrophic to your online connection. In a virtual world where your future connections expect authenticity, you need to prove that you are a real person with a real career history and set of expertise. If you remove this transparency from your profile settings, you can be sure that a hiring executive or recruiter who is searching for a future employee with your expertise will pass you by in favor of another candidate who is willing to be more open.
5. Select who can see your connections
There are certainly two schools of thought on generating first-degree connections. On the one hand, you might choose to connect only with those you know well. On the other, you might seek and accept connections from individuals whom you do not know but with whom a connection might be valuable down the road. Either way, when you hide your connections, you remove the essential value of having connections from your profile and discourage people from connecting with you.
6. Show/hide “Viewers of this profile also viewed” box
Are you worried that you have competition? Is this why you might choose to hide the list of profiles of those whom others have viewed in addition to yours? Why are you worried about competing? If your brand is authentic, clear, and valuable, you will never be concerned that others might leave your profile in search of one that better matches their needs–unless, in fact, there is another profile that better matches their needs. You cannot control the needs of a company as it searches for the right executive. You can, however, control the message and the transparency of your own profile, giving a recruiter or hiring executive more reasons to connect with you and to reach out.
Create a LinkedIn profile that a hiring executive cannot ignore. Call Five Strengths to learn how.
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