According to social media expert Amber Mac,
LinkedIn is the social network where small, thoughtless mistakes can
directly impact your professional reputation. Be sure to avoid these LinkedIn faux pas that can work against you when recruiting and building your professional network.
1. Stop using LinkedIn's auto-generated templates.
Avoid generic messaging at all costs. While LinkedIn does
conveniently pre-populate message fields, you will get a whole lot
further with your networking efforts if you take the time to start a
personal conversation. If an interesting, personal, or informative
conversation is started first off through the invitation, you can
greatly improve the positive response rate to your invitations and start
building relationships with new connections and potential candidates.
Using auto-generated templates can often make you look lazy and
careless. Not quite the impression you want to leave on largest
professional online network in the world!
2. Stop pushing identical social updates to your LinkedIn status.
A social media management dashboard can come in handy when you're
trying to schedule the same messages or posts to multiple networks.
However, it is beneficial to tailor posts to a specific social network.
On networks such as Facebook and Twitter, your voice and word choice
can be a little bit casual, fun, and enthusiastic. If you want to share
the same content with your connections within the LinkedIn community, try to tailor it to be a little bit more professional and refined.
3. Stop asking for LinkedIn endorsements from people you don't know.
In the real world, you would never ask someone you don’t know to
write a professional recommendation for you. However, according to Mac,
the exact opposite is true on LinkedIn despite the company's mandate
that clearly states you should only be connecting with people you know.
Requesting an endorsement from a stranger should definitely never
happen. A move like this will make you come across as desperate and
immature. Again, not exactly the image you want to portray to your
desired professional community or prospective candidates.
When it comes to LinkedIn, recruiters need to be sure to monitor
their behavior and actions on the site to avoid tainting their
professional image. To ensure that your reputation is protected, be sure
to appropriately tailor your messages, customize your posts, and
nurture your connections into relationships. Who knows, maybe your next
LinkedIn connection will be that next great hire that you have been waiting for.