LINKEDIN FOR DUMMIES

387 Pages·2021·24.08 MB·english

by  JOEL ELAD

LinkedIn
®
6th Edition
by Joel Elad
LinkedIn® For Dummies®, 6th Edition
Published by: John Wiley & Sons, Inc., 111 River Street, Hoboken, NJ 07030-5774, www.wiley.com
Copyright © 2021 by John Wiley & Sons, Inc., Hoboken, New Jersey
Published simultaneously in Canada
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Library of Congress Control Number: 2021933662
ISBN 978-1-119-69533-2 (pbk); ISBN 978-1-119-69539-4 (ebk); ISBN 978-1-119-69534-9 (ebk)
Manufactured in the United States of America
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Contents at a Glance
Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
Part 1: Understanding LinkedIn Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
CHAPTER 1: Looking into LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
LinkedIn®
CHAPTER 2: Signing Up and Creating Your Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
CHAPTER 3: Completing Your Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Part 2: Finding Others and Getting Connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67
CHAPTER 4: Discovering and Building Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .69
CHAPTER 5: Growing Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
CHAPTER 6: Managing Messages and InMail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
CHAPTER 7: Interacting with and Endorsing Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 127
Part 3: Growing and Managing Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 145
CHAPTER 8: Understanding Your News Feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
CHAPTER 9: Exploring the Power of Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 161
CHAPTER 10: Accessing LinkedIn with a Mobile Device . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 179
CHAPTER 11: Configuring Settings Like a Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
CHAPTER 12: Using LinkedIn with Your Internet Activities . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .211
Part 4: Finding Employees, Jobs, and Companies . . . . . . . . . . 223
CHAPTER 13: Finding Employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
CHAPTER 14: Finding a Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 .41
CHAPTER 15: Following Companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Part 5: Using LinkedIn for Everyday Business . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 267
CHAPTER 16: Getting Connected with Groups . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 269
CHAPTER 17: Implementing Sales and Marketing Techniques . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 289
CHAPTER 18: Using LinkedIn Ads . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 305
CHAPTER 19: Discovering Creative Uses of LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 321
Part 6: The Part of Tens . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 335
CHAPTER 20: Ten LinkedIn Do’s and Don’ts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 337
CHAPTER 21: Ten LinkedIn Resources . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 347
Index . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 353

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1
About This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Foolish Assumptions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2
Icons Used in This Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Beyond the Book . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
Where to Go from Here . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 3
PART 1: UNDERSTANDING LINKEDIN BASICS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
CHAPTER 1: Looking into LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .7
Understanding Your New Contact Management and
Networking Toolkit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Keeping track of your contacts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Understanding the different degrees of network connections . . . . 10
Discovering What You Can Do with LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Building your brand and profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 13
Looking for a job now or later . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14
Finding out all kinds of valuable information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Expanding your network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16
Navigating LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17
Touring the top navigation bar . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 18
Looking at the Settings & Privacy page . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 19
Understanding LinkedIn Costs and Benefits . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Weighing free versus paid accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 20
Comparing the paid accounts . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21
Upgrading to a premium account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 24
CHAPTER 2: Signing Up and Creating Your Account . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Joining LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 27
Joining with an invitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28
Joining without an invitation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29
Completing the sign-up process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 30
Building Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 39
CHAPTER 3: Completing Your Profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .43
Adding a Summary and Basic Information . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43
Updating the basic information sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45
Writing your summary first . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52
Completing Your Summary . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 54
Adding More Profile Sections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55
Table of Contents v
Adding a Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57
Reporting Your Education . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 60
Setting Your Profile URL and Public View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63
PART 2: FINDING OTHERS AND GETTING CONNECTED . . . . 67
CHAPTER 4: Discovering and Building Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Searching Your First-Degree Connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69
Searching the LinkedIn Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 72
Starting with basic search options . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 73
Advanced searching with filters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76
Performing advanced searches . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78
Saving searches for future use . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 79
CHAPTER 5: Growing Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 83
Building a Meaningful Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84
Importing Contacts into LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Importing a contacts list from your email system . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87
Checking for members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Finding classmates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 91
Using the People You May Know feature . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 93
Browsing your connections’ networks . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94
Sending Connection Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97
Sending requests to existing members . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 98
Understanding why you shouldn’t use canned invitations . . . . . . . 99
Sending requests to nonmembers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .100
Communicating the value of joining LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .102
Removing people from your network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 103
Accepting (or Gracefully Declining) Invitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 105
CHAPTER 6: Managing Messages and InMail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 107
Using InMail versus Using LinkedIn Messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108
Understanding LinkedIn messages . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .108
Understanding your inbox . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .110
Getting to know InMail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 112
Sending InMail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .113
Managing Invitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115
Tracking sent invitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .115
Tracking received invitations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 116
Setting Up an Introduction . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 118
Planning your approach to each person . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 119
Sending an introduction request message . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 120
Managing Introduction Requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 122
Accepting requests and forwarding the introduction . . . . . . . . . . 123
Gracefully declining requests . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 126
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CHAPTER 7: Interacting with and Endorsing Your Network . . . . 127
Interacting with Your Network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 128
Creating a status update to stay connected . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 129
Interacting with status updates . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 132
Giving and Receiving Endorsements on LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .136
Endorsing someone on LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .138
Accepting endorsements on LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 139
Managing your skills and endorsements . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .141
PART 3: GROWING AND MANAGING YOUR NETWORK . . . .145
CHAPTER 8: Understanding Your News Feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 147
Understanding the News Feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 148
Configuring Your News Feed . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 151
Setting Up Digest Notifications . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 153
Writing an Article on LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 155
Managing Post Interactions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .158
CHAPTER 9: Exploring the Power of Recommendations . . . . . . . . 161
Understanding Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .162
Writing Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 164
Choose wisely, grasshopper: Deciding whom to recommend . . . 164
Look right here: Making your recommendation stand out . . . . . . 165
Creating a recommendation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 166
Requesting Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168
Choosing whom to ask . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .168
Creating a polite recommendation request . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 169
Gracefully Declining a Recommendation (or a Request for One) . . . . 171
Managing Recommendations . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 172
Editing or removing recommendations you’ve made . . . . . . . . . . 172
Handling new recommendations you’ve received . . . . . . . . . . . . . 174
Removing or requesting to revise a recommendation . . . . . . . . . 175
CHAPTER 10: Accessing LinkedIn with a Mobile Device . . . . . . . . . . 179
Surveying the LinkedIn Mobile App . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 180
Installing Any LinkedIn Mobile App . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 182
Breaking Down the Sections of the LinkedIn Mobile App . . . . . . . . . .184
Connecting Your App Usage with Website Usage . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .189
CHAPTER 11: Configuring Settings Like a Pro . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 191
Using the Settings & Privacy Page as a Command Console . . . . . . . . 192
Starting with Basic Account Changes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 194
Controlling Visibility and Privacy Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 199
Finalizing Your LinkedIn Communications Settings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 206
Table of Contents vii
CHAPTER 12: Using LinkedIn with Your Internet Activities . . . . . . 211
Exporting LinkedIn Connections to Your Email Application . . . . . . . . 212
Creating your contacts export file in LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 212
Exporting contacts to Office 365 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .214
Exporting contacts to Outlook (non-Office-Suite version) . . . . . . . 215
Exporting contacts to Gmail . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 215
Exporting Your Profile and Badge . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217
Exporting your profile to a PDF file . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .217
Creating a public profile badge for other websites . . . . . . . . . . . . 219
PART 4: FINDING EMPLOYEES, JOBS,
AND COMPANIES . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 223
CHAPTER 13: Finding Employees . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 225
Managing Your Job Listings . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 226
Posting a job listing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 227
Advertising your job listing to your network . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 231
Reviewing applicants . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 234
Screening Candidates with LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .237
Using Strategies to Find Active or Passive Job Seekers . . . . . . . . . . . . 238
CHAPTER 14: Finding a Job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 241
Searching for an Open Position . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .242
Tuning Up Your Profile and Network to Make a Good Impression . . . .246
Preparing Your Profile and Account Settings for Job Searches . . . . . 247
Checking your profile’s visibility . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 247
Optimizing your profile . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 249
Involving LinkedIn in Job Search Strategies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 250
Leveraging connections . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 251
Finding people with the same or similar job . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .252
Taking advantage of your alma mater . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 252
Finding target company referrals . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 253
CHAPTER 15: Following Companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 255
Searching for Companies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .256
Putting Your Company on LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 259
Adding a Company page to LinkedIn . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 260
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