Posted: 8th May 2017
In February 2017, LinkedIn started rolling out its new desktop redesign to bring it more in line with the mobile app. Many of the changes are not liked by LinkedIn members, including myself.
On the LinkedIn Help Forum there is an open question from LinkedIn asking for feedback.
To date, there have been 3,600 comments by LinkedIn members, 99% of them are negative pleading for changes or the old version to be reinstated. Interestingly, there has not been any comments or answers from anyone at LinkedIn.
So what are the changes and how can you make the most of the new version of LinkedIn? Here’s just a few suggestions:
The Most Unwelcome Changes to the new LinkedIn
News feed
On your Home page you see status updates and feature articles from your 1st Degree connections and those you follow. However the news feed is no longer automatically in chronological order. This means the algorithms determine the order based on – well who knows what! Comments, interaction, trends, recommendations and other articles you like etc.
The problem is that you will see (and see again) posts that are days old and you may have to scroll down a long way to see a post from a few minutes ago. This also means your articles and status updates will not be as visible as they were.
After months of complaints, just a few days ago, LinkedIn finally added a tab at the top of the newsfeed to change from ‘top’ to ‘recent’, so I recommend you alter this – but you have to do it every time you log in as it reverts to ‘top’.
To make your posts more visible you could try tagging people who might want to like or share it and sharing your articles on other social media such as Facebook or Twitter to drive people back to your LinkedIn profile.
Groups
All groups are now private which means unfortunately posts from groups no longer appear on your news feed. You have to go into each group to see status updates from members. This means there is a lot less activity in groups now even though they are an excellent way of improving your profile and reputation. The only answer is to work harder, visit the groups often and engage with the posts from the more active members.
Profile Order
There is now no chance to re-order your Profile; for example I moved my skills and endorsements above my work history as I wanted to showcase my current skills not my past experience. There is nothing that can be done about this, or the fact that only a small amount of each section is visible. You just have to make it attention-grabbing (including the headline) so people are tempted to click (and click and click again to open up all the relevant sections).
There are several other sections that you used to be able to reorder that also are in chronological order. For example if you get a new qualification it will appear at the end – the only answer at the moment is to delete and re-enter in the order you want them!
Profile Summary
Only two lines are now visible to your contacts or people who view your profile, so it is even more important to get the start of your summary right. Make sure that the most important points are at the beginning not at the end. This means there is even more reason to make the most of your 120 character headline too as this is visible all the time, including when you post or comment.
Profile Skills/Endorsements
Only the top three skills are displayed rather than all as before, so make sure you reorder (click and drag) these to showcase the skills most relevant to your contacts or potential customers/recruiters.
Welcome Changes to the new LinkedIn
There are lots of other changes that have not met with approval from the LinkedIn community but just to counteract some of the negative things, there are a few things that I do like about the new layout.
Accomplishments
I quite like all the ‘other’ things that you are associated with or have achieved are now lumped together at the end of your profile under Accomplishments.
Notifications
You no longer have to turn off notifications if you are updating your profile to stop your network getting updates, this is great if you are doing an overhaul of your profile or some training. But you can choose to notify people by going into Me, Settings, Privacy, Sharing Profile Edits.
Highlights
These are displayed on everyone’s profile so you can quickly see if you share mutual connections, groups, companies or educational establishments.
Profile Skills/Endorsements
You no longer get those annoying pop-ups that ask you to endorse every contact for every skill when you go to your home page. You can turn on or off whether you want give or receive endorsements (by clicking the pencil to edit skills and then adjust endorsement settings at the bottom). However I have yet to see any suggestions of contacts to endorse.
You can endorse your contacts by going to the skills section of their profile. If you want someone to endorse a skill (or give you a recommendation) I find it best to message them, or there is a new ‘Manage Recommendations’ page in your profile.
Getting help with the new LinkedIn
Have you got the new version of LinkedIn, do you love it or hate it? If you live in the Midlands and want to join me for a three hour practical workshop to show you how to get the most out of the new LinkedIn please check out this link on ImagineTraining.
