LinkedIn

Dos and Don’ts of Networking

 1. Invest time and effort in making your
profile professionally attractive
 Never make any false claims
 No discrepancies between your LinkedIn profile &
your resume
 Upload a professional quality photograph –
thoroughly professional-looking
 Mind you ‘your photograph’ – a double-edged
sword
 Inserting a photo: your race, appearance(+/-bias
in recruiters)
 Not inserting a photo: leads negative speculation

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

 Pay attention to the headline (the line below your
name in the LinkedIn profile)
 Describe yourself briefly & truthfully(in ten
words)
 If you skip the line – then the visitors can see only
your name & country of residence (Ex. Ram
Kumar, India)
 It attracts nobody to your profile
 A generalized headline is better than no
headline(‘Project Manager’ or ‘Student’)

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

 After the headline, the next comes the
summary
 Tell the world about your work, expertise,
training, experience and achievements in a
couple of hundred words
 Don’t forget to offer a glimpse of your
personality in the summary
 For inspiration, do go over the summaries
written by social influencers
Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli
Jeff Weiner, CEO LinkedIn
Description for the current job:
“Connecting the world's professionals to make
them more productive and successful. Since
joining the company in December 2008,
LinkedIn has expanded its global platform to 23
languages and more than 30 offices around the
world, grown its membership base from 33M to
more than 430M, and increased its revenue
from $78M to over $3B in 2015”

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

 2. Make it easy for others to find you
 include achievements that are likely to
interest fellow professionals
 Choose the appropriate keywords – words
that refer to areas of your interest as well as
your achievements
 Help search engines bring the right kind of
traffic to your profile

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

 10 Worthless Words to Delete from
Your LinkedIn Profile
1. Specialized
2. Leadership
3. Passionate
4. Strategic
5. Experienced
6. Focused
7. Expert
8. Certified
9. Creative
10. Excellent
(*http://www.businessnewsdaily.com/3510-linkedin-
buzzwords.html, January 2017 )
Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli
• These words are so broad as to be virtually
meaning less
• Thousands of people use them, they don’t set
you apart from the rest
• Demonstrate what you mean by ‘passionate’,
‘creative’ or ‘expert’
• This is applicable to your resumes as well
• Recruiters look for evidence in greater detail
not these ‘tall claims’
Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli
 3. Nurture a few strategically
important connections

 Identify a few individuals you like to connect

for your professional growth
 Follow the social media accounts of movers &
shakers in your field, comment on articles they
write. Express your views/insights.
 Share a few links that they are useful to your
fellow professionals. Don’t forget to include a
customized cover note while sending the links
Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli
 4. Develop brand YOU

 Let your connections know what you are good at

 Be cautious about the claims you make in your
LinkedIn profile about your achievements.
 Deception is never a good idea; particularly bad
to attempt it in a LinkedIn profile, it’s a public
document you can be easily caught for your false
claims
 Check your profile from your smartphone to get a
glimpse how it looks to a stranger
Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli
 6. Post updates from time to time

 Share with your network any event or

information that may be professional interest
to them
 This keeps bringing up your name through
their news feed
 Your updates could be also about your new
skills/qualifications that you have acquired

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

 7. Follow a few organizations

 Follow a few organizations/companies that

you admire or perhaps hope to join someday
 Reading the regular updates of the company
will keep you well-informed for your upcoming
interviews of the company.
 Awareness about the company that you are
looking to join is of paramount importance

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

 1.Don’t convert your LinkedIn profile
into a job appeal
 Focus on yourself as a professional capable of
making a contribution in certain fields rather
than as a desperate job seeker
 Best offers are the ones that come to you
without your asking

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

 2.Don’t send out generic requests for
connection
 Customize each invitation that you send out
else, you run the risk of rejection
 When they see no reason why they should
accept your invitation to get connected, they
may even label your invitation as spam

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

(Imagine you’re Rahul Roy)
Bharat Sharma wants to connect with you on
LinkedIn.
View Profile
Accept
Dear Mr. Rahul Roy
I follow your fascinating blogs on interior designing.
I would like to connect with you on LinkedIn.
Bharat Sharma

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli

 A few more Don’ts
 Don’t be a mindless collector of contacts,
Quality matters a lot than quantity
 Don’t post lazy questions like “ What should I
do to improve my communication?”
 Finally, don’t put all your career eggs in the
LinkedIn basket
 It is foolish to devote a lot of time everyday to
LinkedIn and depend completely on it to lift
your career
Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli
 References
• Mishra S. & Monipally M (2014) Online
Communication Strategies for Managers

Sasi Sekhar Mallampalli