LinkedIn Home Page
Now you have entered your profile information. Before you begin to actually navigate LinkedIn, let’s take a look at what your “Home” page on LinkedIn will look like. It is the page you will see after going to www.linkedin.com and signing in with your username and password. While navigating LinkedIn, it can also be accessed by selecting “Home” on the left-hand navigation bar.
As a disclaimer, I would like to point out that not everyone’s Home Page will look alike. For instance, if you have indicated in your profile that you are currently unemployed, “Company Groups” will not appear in your left-hand navigation bar. I personally cannot see “Groups You Might Like” and have only been able to see the “People You May Know” module on occasion.
That aside, the Home Page is divided into a top section, a left-hand section, the main body (which is in the middle), which contains another right-hand column, and finally the bottom of the page. You have access to all of LinkedIn’s features via this screen.
The image on the next page will simplify the LinkedIn Home Page for you, as I have tried to illustrate the most essential items you will be utilizing most.
Figure 2.2. Your LinkedIn Home Page
Before tackling the main areas of your Home Page, I want to point out that I find LinkedIn is sometimes repetitive with its user interface; many paths will often lead to the same destination. You will get used to this. For instance, choosing “Advanced People Search” by pressing the downwards arrow to the right of “People” will lead you to the same page that choosing the “Search People” arrow to the left of the Search Bar and then pressing the “Advanced” button does.
In my opinion, LinkedIn is still trying to find the perfect User Interface to show off the tremendous value their site has; in the meantime, I find the user interface somewhat confusing and inefficient at times, which is why I am writing this book—to help guide you. I will not go over everything on this page and instead will concentrate only on those things that I think you need to concentrate on.
Let’s tackle each section individually. The top section, at the time of this writing, displays “People,” “Jobs,” “Answers” and “Companies” on the left, while the right side shows “Account & Settings,” “Help” and “Sign In/Out” on the top with the Search Bar on the bottom. Let’s focus on the Search Bar for a moment. By pressing the downward arrow button to the left of the text window, you will see that you can search a variety of things from this one text box, including People, Jobs, Companies, Answers, Inbox, and Groups. Within some sections, the standard search does not yield enough useable results; the option to do an advanced search on some of these can be selected by choosing the “Advanced” text on the right side of this box. This option appears when you choose to search for People, Jobs, or Answers.
On occasion you may need to access the “Accounts & Settings” button to customize your experience. More information about what you can do there will be spread throughout this book, primarily in Part II: The Windmill Networking Approach to Understanding LinkedIn sections.
The primary area for navigation will be the menu on the left side of your Home Page which I will often refer to as the left-hand navigation bar. Starting with the “Home” button, which will always bring you back to your Home Page, you can navigate to any of the following from here: Company Groups (if they exist for your Company or you are currently employed with a Company listed in the Company Directory), Groups, Profile, Contacts, Inbox, and
Applications, should you have any. Furthermore, the “+” symbol next to all of these titles, if pressed, will collapse into submenus which let you choose specifics.
I won’t go through every option here, but I will point out the more frequently used features:
•“Home” to get you to back to your Home Page.
•“Groups” to access your Groups, or specific Groups in the submenu should you wish to list them here (this can be customized in “Account & Settings”).
•“Edit My Profile” in the “Profile” menu to modify your profile and optimize it even after it has been created. You should get into a monthly habit of looking at your profile to make sure it syncs with your LinkedIn Brand and networking objectives, which may change over time.
•“Connections” in the “Contacts” menu to browse your current connections or add/remove connections.
•The “Inbox.” Most messages appearing here can also be sent directly to your registered email address. How often you use this section really depends on which information you decide to access directly through LinkedIn and which information you choose to receive via email notification. I have devoted an entire section to this topic: “Controlling Your Email Notifications” in Chapter 10: Customizing Your LinkedIn Experience.
•“Applications” should you choose to install any and modify their settings.
•The prominent green colored and self-explanatory “Add Connections” button.
The last section on the left-hand side, on the bottom of the long menu, is your current photo, Profile Headline, Status, and display of the number of total connections you have. You have the ability to easily change your Status here, so you can update it without having to jump around.
For the main middle/right section of your Home Page, which looks like a wide middle column and a narrow right column, there is some pretty serious information overload. The middle section is divided between an “Inbox,” “Network Updates,” and “Company News” (if you are currently employed and your company is in the LinkedIn directory).
On top, the Inbox will simply display your latest five messages, combined with a summary of action items, or messages you have not responded to yet. The bottom Company News will display news from the company you have listed on your profile as being “current.” The meat of the information here lies in the Network Updates.
Network Updates begin with a “What are you working on now?” status bar that you can update. I call this the “Status Update Bar” and have devoted an entire section, “The Status Update: “What are You Working on Now?” in Chapter 10: Customizing Your LinkedIn Experience, to cover this in greater detail.
The information below your Status Update Bar in Network Updates is filled with fascinating content being broadcast to you from your connections. These updates will keep you up-to-date on whatever your Windmill Networking contacts are doing on LinkedIn. From updating their profiles with new job information to posting a new photo, if your connections have agreed to broadcast their activity to their network, it will show up in this area. A lot of LinkedIn users get into a habit of spending the first few minutes of their day screening through this information, as it often supplies insightful information you can utilize to initiate a conversation. The information also helps you keep in close contact with your Windmill Network.
If you click the “See more updates” text next to the “Network Updates” title, you will be led to a screen where you can see a plethora of broadcasted content from your network. Four tabs appear conveniently at the top to help you navigate through “All Updates,” “Category View,” “Connection View,” as well as seeing what you are broadcasting to your network in “My Updates.”
