Compete with Your LinkedIn Network for Profile Rank
Compete with Your LinkedIn Network for Profile Rank
LinkedIn has rolled out a competition in the form of ranking profiles against your network that can help job seekers with their job searches. Use this new tools to bring your networking efforts online and to ensure that you are maximizing the LinkedIn platform’s opportunities–but do not get lost in the competition and lose sight of the true value of LinkedIn for your job search.
LinkedIn Games “Profile Views”
LinkedIn’s latest update challenges its users to “beat” their network for profile views in a new feature called “How You Rank.” This feature positions each user against those of his or her network, showing the individual’s relative popularity as measured by page views.
How this can help you: Of course, you should always be seeking to grow your network strategically with:
- Colleagues
- Recruiters
- Potential connections in new industries
- Hiring executives
- Alumni
- … and more.
Gamifying LinkedIn?
Just when you think that job search is not complex enough, that you are competing with a select group of elite executives for rare career opportunities, LinkedIn has found another way for you to compete. LinkedIn’s goal is to improve your engagement with the platform by having you regularly update and refine your profile. LinkedIn improves its value to you, and you improve your value to it, via your network. Your network will see that you have made changes and thus view your profile (driving your profile rank). You see improvement, and try to elevate your profile even more. The outcome, to your benefit as a job seeker, is that you polish your profile, improving your ability to be found, and LinkedIn improves its page views across the platform. Everyone wins.
Can Gaming LinkedIn Harm You as a Job Seeker?
On the face of it, no. Updating your profile regularly absolutely can help you in your job search. There are probably multiple aspects of your profile that you have ignored to date to which you can add content. For example, do you have a patent? Make sure that they are recorded on your profile. Did you earn a new certification? Add that as well. Did you use all 2000 characters for your summary? Max that section out today. Add every project on which you have worked in the projects section. The list goes on.
On the other hand, tweaking your profile every day has repercussions. To start, for each of the examples above, you need to decide whether your network needs to know about these immediately. It might make sense for you to update your profile with notifications turned off, so you do not inundate your network with small changes to your profile.
Do Not Get Lost in the LinkedIn Profile View Game
More important, however, is that you do not let your message get lost in the medium. Changing your profile every day, or multiple times per day, is too frequent for you to see the results of your changes. I recommend that you do update your profile in one big push to start but make additional changes and measure your stats only weekly. That should be enough time for the changes you make to have an impact on your overall profile views.
LinkedIn’s take on this feature is that it pushes all users to put their best social media presence out there, but I think there is more to it than that. The more engagement you demonstrate on LinkedIn, the more you will be actively engaging with others, which can only lead to better visibility and interaction for you as a job seeker. Also, always reach for quality connections and profile views over quantity. It does not matter whether you are getting 150 profile views each day if none of those individuals are in your target market, hiring leaders, your alumni, or anyone else who might be able to inform your job search strategy.
Image courtesy of freeimages.com / jabsandrew
