5 Common Pitfalls to Avoid on LinkedIn by Your Personal Coaches at GyanSeekers

Posted on November 13, 2015 by Gyan Seekers, One of Thousands of Business Coaches on Noomii.

5. Displaying Personal Images As Your Profile Picture

What do we mean by personal? Aren’t all pics personal? Sure they are. But when a picture is of you is showing off your last vacation on a ranch, riding a horse, it stops being a professional image and becomes a photo looking for a like on Facebook.

Your would-be managers, peers or employers are on LinkedIn and are part of your professional network. Try this – if you would not show yourself in certain poses or locations or dress to your colleagues or boss at work, or at a conference, then you probably should not display it as your profile picture.

No one really wants to see how cool you look in sunglasses, admire your ability to pose perfectly for the camera, or how that trendy designer shirt, dress or exotic jewelry looks on you. Post a picture of you as you wish to be seen in your professional role – no exceptions.

For those of your connections who like you no matter what you wear, please send them your Facebook, Instagram or Whatsapp (friends group) invitation.Remember, first impressions count as do the multiple views you might get if you are lucky (the most used feature on LinkedIN has to be: who’s viewed my profile!) — and since you can never be sure what your dream opportunity host cares about, play it safe.

If you still need to be convinced, remember the visa and passport application needs? There’s a reason the Government wants to see both ears in the photo.

4. Badly written, incomplete and incoherent laundry list of achievements.

Ok, we get it. You’ve been at the same company for longer than you can remember and don’t need to look for a job. You are only on LinkedIn to find old college buddies. Or just because everyone else is on it. Perhaps you have frozen your profile in time with vague clues left behind for archaeologists of future eras to discover.

Well, guess what? It honestly doesn’t matter why you are on LinkedIn – it matters who is viewing your profile and what they think of your sloppiness. Unless you are the genius who invented stuff the world uses, or have genuine reasons to lie low (skunkworks startup? unauthorized background verifiers?), the you would be better off by sharing a professional executive summary that mimics a real world introduction to you or to your business.

Given the import of LinkedIn in professional circles, it is highly possible that the current company you work for or the future company you want to work for are, will be reflected in the image and presence your profile portrays of you. So, what do you want your company brand to look like?

3. Trading Recommendations.

Have you ever ever felt guilty or obligated to write a LinkedIn recommendation? Especially to someone who wrote you one? After all, he or she was so nice to have given you one – unsolicited at that. Don’t you owe him or her a return writeup as well ?

There is no rule telling you not to. But if all you have on your profile page are recommendations from people whom you have in turn, recommended, well, that tells its own story. Doesn’t it? Would you go to the shop the taxi driver you hired on vacation in an exotic city takes you? Why not? You guess it may not be the best shop in town, right?

Well, psychology works that way for recommendations as well. If you have not garnered true blue recommendations for your work without having to return the favor of recommending the same person back, then you may need to rethink your strategy.

It could be that the admiration is mutual and genuine. Just don’t make it all of your recommendations. That would be artificial gains and doesn’t serve either party.

Whose recommendations should you seek or provide for ? Only those professionals (friends or not) whose work you can vouch for impartially – because you have worked with her or him or have sufficient knowledge of personally in some other manner (conferences?). Treat every recommendation you ask and give as a matter of professional integrity.

We know, sometimes, in India (perhaps elsewhere too) it is sometimes hard to say No or not return the favor when your friends ask for a recommendation. But try, anyway.

If you cannot, then restrict it to a character reference only – for example:

A nice personal reference and you are off the hook – no compromised integrity or ruined friendships.

2. Sending Random Professionals Default LinkedIn Connect Messages

You know when you receive yet another LinkedIn notification of someone trying to connect, and you open the invite to know more and are met with the bland default message:

Our first reaction is always – Seriously ? If you cannot be bothered to explain why you want to connect with someone, you have already lost their interest. Remember, it is not about you – it is about them.

Good luck getting that reply. But why ?

Well, first, you have probably already irritated them with having to guess if they know you but don’t remember you (they don’t want to say the wrong thing to a potential client or VIP). Which means, before they blow you off, or worse, ignore you, they will have to look you up (see what we mean about that top used feature?) (and about having a good profile? See tip #3).

Second, they look you up and still have no clue – they can’t place you or be sure they don’t you know you. Safest bet – ignore till more information shows up. Meanwhile, you wait for that acceptance infinitely. If it is a senior person at work, then you will walk around wondering “But why didn’t they accept my invite, do they hate me?”

So save yourself some grief. Never, never approach someone cold with an impersonal LinkedIN default message unless you two have been best buddies in a previous life. Even then, better not.

Until LinkedIn offers better options to customize it in settings, take the extra 30 seconds to edit the default message. Here is an example:

Ok, maybe a tad too much to expect Daniel Craig has a profile on LinkedIn and that he reads your message among the 1.5M he probably gets, but what if he did? Don’t you want yours to stand out vs the default connect message? Yep, we thought so.

Here are some more mundane examples (sigh, life is dull):

If it is someone from work that you already have met, try:

Or shorter, if you have a specific career area of interest:

You get the drift? Impressions matter.

Tailor your note. You’ll thank us for it when your acceptance rate goes up.

1. Quality Trumps Quantity.

Yes, we mouth this homily to ourselves all the time in real life, but when it comes to Facebook and LinkedIn, we suddenly throw common sense out and invite the whole world in.

Well, the number of connections on your profile is not a contest for who can garner the most number of random people on their profile (fully connected (mesh) networks in OS is not popular for a reason) Plus, this is not twitter. Or Facebook.

Just because someone has sent you an invite (except if stands out like we advocate in tip #2, we cannot go around contradicting ourselves, can we?), don’t jump to accept.

Some questions to ask yourself first:

Once you connect, you if you are like most people, give permission for them to know all of your contacts, see what you care about the most, follow you around, and learn from your posts to your contacts.

We may be counseling against popular trend on LinkedIn but we strongly advise that you aim to build a clean career professionals network that can mutually benefit, aid and assist both parties now or in the future in terms of career goals and professional friendships. We also advocate regularly pruning your connects list (yes, sacrilege, we know) to ensure you keep the right set of focussed network to take advantage of LinkedIn opportunities.

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