Previously, in ‘“Interested” – I have no idea what that means!‘, I talked about blindly responding to LinkedIn posts, and how it would change how employers see you. This post is a follow-up to help you correct some of your previous behaviour and give a better impression of yourself.
I don’t believe LinkedIn really understands how to encourage and measure genuine discussions, so it has decided to count responses to posts as a measure of engagement, and provided, by default, messaging suggestions for every comment. These, apparently, are generated by ‘machine learning’, which only means that the more you use them, the more often they will appear.
Do you want your discussions to be generated by a machine? I sincerely hope not, and employers would prefer to get to know the real you too!
The first step to getting your real identity would be to prevent these ‘machine’ suggestions appearing altogether. There is a menu called [Messaging experience] in your LinkedIn settings under [Communications]. The menu looks like this on my laptop:
In the [Messaging experience] menu you can switch off [Messaging suggestions], and then you will have to write your own replies. This may seem to be a lot of hard work, but, hopefully, you’ll no longer appear to be a machine, but a human again!
Now you are free to express yourself. Remember to read the whole job post, because a good recruiter will always include a link or email address you can use to apply for the job, so use it, and don’t reply “Interested” on Linkedin (or even worse, post your email address, which could be a security risk to you, and suggest to a future employer that you are a security risk!).
Good luck!…………..Phil
