We received 2 messages last week via LinkedIn that were out of kilter with the site’s motto that “Relationships Matter”. The first was a message from a Group Owner saying they were no longer including recruiter professionals in their group. Feeling unloved, we asked why. The non-specific reply was that it was a new group guideline. Fair enough. The person who sent that reply also sent an invitation to connect. Isn't that a bit cheeky? The second message was an invitation to connect. It said as we are in the same industry we can benefit from each other's network. We looked at the person's profile. It said for reasons of confidentiality they kept their contacts hidden. Again, cheeky and just a bit one-sided?
Those 2 messages got us thinking about what people liked and disliked about LinkedIn. So, we fired off a quick message to 35 people in our network and asked for a one sentence answer to the following 3 questions...
1) What is your favourite LinkedIn feature?
2) What is the most frustrating thing for you about LinkedIn?
3) If you were to provide one DON'T relating to usage, what would it be?
Twenty two people replied and these are the things they liked most...
a) Group discussions for networking, industry expertise, promoting events and being able to get answers for research/articles from people within and outside of your network.
b) The ability to re-connect with former colleagues.
c) Viewing contacts' connections to network and/or reference check before meetings/interviews.
d) Finding candidates.
e) The search function allowing you to find people by company/location/postcode.
f) The fact that people create their profiles.
g) The ability to confirm invitations via e-mail instead of logging into the site.
Frustrating things fell broadly in 2 groups relating to both functionality and best practice...
i) New users wrote that they could get more out of it if there were good online tutorials or better screen prompts.
iii) Group Owners can't prevent members from moving discussions/event postings to the "Jobs" tab when they have nothing to do with jobs.
iv) Getting contacted by head hunters offering you US West Coast Software roles when, for example, you're UK based and in a different industry.
v) You can only use it if you pay as the "for free" account is useless.
vi) The inability to see if people are active users and when they last updated their profiles.
vii) The regular LinkedIn message, "We are currently upgrading the search engine. Search will be back momentarily."
viii) Job postings are expensive and quickly get lost in the mass.
ix) Some of the navigation is fiddly, for example, you cannot delete things from your inbox.
x) Weak integration with address book and communication tools like presence enabled IM. One responder said they'd like to make LinkedIn their address book on fixed and mobile, with the ability to make comments about individual people and integrate across fixed and mobile.
xi) Not being able to pull group e-mail lists any more - can only send a message through LinkedIn to groups.xii) Keeping up-to-date with the changes to contacts and related news.
xiii) There's no blackberry application yet.
xiv) The iPhone application is not very good.
xv) Spam messages are increasing.
Later in the week we will list the LINKEDIN DON'Ts. There were rather a lot!
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