Understanding the Capability of LinkedIn

LinkedIn is the platform of choice for a job seeker. LinkedIn is configured optimally to showcase a member’s experience and expertise comprehensively.

LinkedIn has the following placeholders to capture the details of its members:

• photograph
• professional elements of the headline
• summary
• work experience including the start and end dates of employment
• educational qualifications, year of graduation
• licenses and certifications
• skills and endorsements
• recommendations
• publications
• patents
• honors and awards
• projects

These are parameters that are ideally suited to evaluate an applicant. It is an architecture that enables the job seeker to build his brand. It is thus a natural platform for recruiters to be present and collaborate with job seekers.

Understanding the fundamentals and truths about LinkedIn

Three critical factors determine social media experience irrespective of platforms:

• Identity: quality and completeness of profile
• Network: quality and quantity of network
• Engagement: quality and frequency of engagement

Identity, in the LinkedIn context

The LinkedIn profile represents the identity of an individual. The LinkedIn company page represents the identity of an organization.

As suggested in “Social Media Implementation: A Reality Connect”, Identity is the prime driver of social media experience. It is the reflection of the need of an individual or organization. The present and future needs should be taken into account. This will determine the traffic coming to the profile and the strategy to nurture a network.

Like a website, traffic to the LinkedIn profile is a function of the keywords, driven by the principles of Search Engine Optimization.

Decoding LinkedIn’s levels of connectivity, size of the network, and its impact on search

In real life, everyone in the world is six or fewer social connections away from one another. This is popularly referred to as six degrees of separation. LinkedIn allows for three degrees of separation.

• A direct connection is denoted as Level 1
• A connection separated by a Level 1 connection is denoted as Level 2
• A connection further separated by one more level is denoted as Level 3

The size of an individual’s network is the sum of Level 1, Level 2, Level 3 connections, and the number of members in the groups the individual belongs.

How does this affect an individual’s LinkedIn experience?

LinkedIn has 722 million members (this number is at the time this book was written; the number of members continues to grow as you are reading this).

Creating a LinkedIn account does not ensure access to 722 million members.

Let us assume that the size of an individual’s network is 122 million.

That will mean that (722 – 122) = 600 million people will not be a part of an individual’s network.

That will mean that those 600 million people will not have access to an individual’s profile. The individual also will not have access to those 600 million people.

An important question one may want to ask, does an individual need to connect with all the 722 million members?

The strategy to nurture a network on LinkedIn

LinkedIn allows an individual to connect up to 30,000 connections. The quality and quantity of an individual’s network determine the LinkedIn experience. It is simply not possible to connect with everybody on the platform. The strategy to nurture a network must therefore be to connect with people who have similar interests.

The quality and frequency of engagement on LinkedIn

Effective engagement impacts reputation positively and helps convert one’s connections into relationships.
Summarizing the science and art of enhancing visibility on LinkedIn:

• Adequate time has to be spent to articulate one’s needs through the choices of keywords. A comprehensive and complete LinkedIn profile will increase traffic.
• Nurture a network proactively for one’s needs. Make sure that one’s network is adequate quantitatively and qualitatively.
• An important quotient of one’s LinkedIn visibility is the alignment and synchronization of one’s LinkedIn profile, network, and engagement.
• The regimen is quintessential to leverage and succeed in the social media space.