LinkedIn Mistakes Too Many People Make

By Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter

In this video, I discuss mistakes WAY too many people make on LinkedIn that cause them to miss out on opportunities.

Confident Body Language

Here’s one that is bizarre to me.  The 1^st mistake I see people make is that they don’t have a LinkedIn account at all.  They’ve done nothing.  I see people who are very successful who don’t want to be on LinkedIn because it’s hard being assaulted by recruiters.  I get that.  But, otherwise, you’ve got to be there.  Otherwise, the door is getting knocked on and you are not there.  And you don’t have to say yes, but the door’s open and you’re not there to answer.

Another mistake people make is they don’t put a photo on their LinkedIn profile and thus there is a little icon or nothing there and it’s a awful.  It misses an opportunity to market yourself that you need to take advantage of.  After all, when folks are considering making a job change, you don’t want to be in a situation where no profile or missing the opportunity do you have your appearance help sell you.

Another thing people do is that they have multiple LinkedIn accounts for themselves.  Why have multiples?  I see this all the time where people wind up having a account and they forget that they have an account and sign up again.  I can tell that because 1 of their profiles only goes back to about 2 jobs ago.  They could’ve updated it, but they forgot they had it. 

Here is one I enjoy.  You have a network of individuals and you don’t connect with them on LinkedIn.  So, all these friends of yours who you have been connected with for 100 years in real life… you don’t connect with them on LinkedIn.

Here is another one.  You don’t turn off notifications when you are doing an update.  Thus, your entire network is updated every time you make a change.  Awful!  Awful!  Especially if you are looking for work and you are connected to a boss, a director, if someone in your organization may not be completely trustworthy.  Why would you do that?

Here is something that people do.  They show things that are just not appropriate to be shared.  So, for example, there are personal types of memes that are shared; there are things from a political standpoint or a religious standpoint that you share on LinkedIn.  It is not for that venue.  What is is for is Facebook. 

Another thing people do is they start talking about the fact that they’re looking for work while they are still working.  So, their stream is filled with things that it should not be filled with if you don’t want your hiring manager to you to know that you are looking.

Another thing and this is, to me, the great cardinal sin, is to make it hard for people to reach out to you.  There is no email address.  Their contact information is not up to date and they do a lot of things that make it harder for someone to find them with the result being no one ever does.  Again, a stupid mistake. 

So, I will simply say that if you are qualified, interested and available 4 positions, you put your email address and phone number in the summary so that, in this way, people can find you.  They can do it easily without “hocking” you, arguing with you, pushing you to do something.  Just make it easy for them.

So, in the summary area, at the end of it, however much text you write, say something along the lines of, “if you want to speak with may about opportunities, email me at . . . or call me at . . . I would be happy to get acquainted with you.” 

That’s a really easy way for people to contact you.

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