Unlock LinkedIn’s hidden features

With self promotion replacing selfies, LinkedIn is the leading professional social network. But business-friendly doesn’t mean boring. Get to grips with LinkedIn’s lesser known features, and this could replace the likes of Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as your most important social platform. So revamp your CV, follow these tips and upgraded career prospects could await.

It might not always be as exciting or LOL-inducing as your Facebook lineup, but your LinkedIn feed can be a whole lot more useful. Assuming you’ve filtered out the junk that is. To do this you’ll want to tap Settings > Account > Feed preferences where you can choose to follow influential and inspiring users and companies who you’re not connected with and broaden your business horizons.

Looking for a new job can be a potentially awkward experience as you try to put your name out there without your current employers catching wind. LinkedIn's Open Candidates feature solves this problem by letting you quietly signal to recruiters that you’re open to new job opportunities without adding alerts to your public profile. This feature will make you more likely to receive relevant job offers.

Being in demand is nice, but if you’re in a position of power, your link invitations could quickly become a who’s who in people you don’t recognise. Hiding your online presence will give you control of your links and add an air of mystery to your persona.

Chatting to a new business contact can be a stressful back and forth of worry, hope and anticipation. If you find yourself constantly panicking about why they haven’t replied already, why not turn on read receipts? Like WhatsApp’s little blue ticks these will let you know when your contact has received and read your message, easing your panic when you can see they’re not ignoring you, they’re just yet to open the message.

If you’re desperately seeking a new job, chances are you’re going to be logging in to LinkedIn at every available opportunity. Fail to be vigilant with those sign outs and you could be setting yourself up for trouble. Tapping Settings > Account > Where you’re signed in, however, lets you see exactly what devices you’re still logged in on – most likely a range of computers belonging to past employers. Worried about who could stumble into your unlocked account? Don’t fret, just tap the End button next to your worrisome active sessions to kill them off.

LinkedIn is great at making sure that it's the contacts you want that make it through, rather than anything irrelevant or ill-considered, but when an unsolicited pitch slips through the net, there are steps you can take to prevent it happening again. You can block any rogue users and refine your business dealings by tapping the three dot menu button at the top of their profile page and hitting the Report / Block option from the pop-up menu. Here, tapping Block will remove messaging privileges and keep your account private from particular eyes.

LinkedIn: Network & Job Search

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