Little Known LinkedIn Tip that Paints a Stronger Picture of YOU!

OK, so you hear about "secret this" and "secret that" when it comes to social media tips and tricks, but I just stumbled across one that I had not heard of before - and believe me, I've been a careful observer of all things in this realm.  What is it? How about controlling where your testimonials are placed in your profile?

By now, you've asked others for a recommendation. Most likely, you've received a few - maybe, even a lot - but chances are, they are all stacked under your latest job listing.  That's not awful, but it doesn't exactly paint a consistent picture of your performance over the years.

And if you're like me, well, you've held a myriad of positions in your career. In my case, fourteen!

For recruiters, it looks like I can't hold a job.  But on closer inspection, one would find that to move up; I had to move out.  It's just the way that it is in advertising & marketing circles (That is, until you finally hang out your own shingle and stop depending upon recruiters to find your next big gig). Which I did.

So, instead of having all of your recommendations dumped under one position, you can select where they go - but you have to do something radical to do it.  You eliminate your current position under your profile (where it states : CURRENT). Don't change your resume one iota. Stay within the Profile section and simply add your position back in.

Let me explain:
I was simply adding another position that I hold (as an assistant football coach for the local high school), but because of the date I had selected, LinkedIn placed it at the top of my profile, making it appear that my main job was football coaching.  (And) that's not what I wanted.  So I toyed-around a bit to fudge the dates just a tad so that my "real" job showed up at the top of the page (it's chronologically based).  In doing so, I dumped my original job, then added it back with a slightly different start date. Wallah... it was back at the top of my profile heading! That's all I wanted to do.   

Then panic set in.

What I hadn't realized, was that all of the testimonials that were attached to the original posting now became "unassigned" and were effectively gone from my profile!  37 endorsements down the drain! :-(

I was panicked at first, thinking that I would need to re-ask all of those that had endorsed me to re-do their recommendation.

Not cool.

However, I didn't lose my cool — firstly, because I had saved a Word doc of all of the quotes that I had received - something you should do right now - so I knew who to ask and could provide them exactly what they had said previously; but secondly, I figured LinkedIn had to have a way to get them back (which they do). As I looked a little more carefully over my new profile and scanned down the entirety of the page, ALL of the recommendations were indeed, listed, but under the heading "Unassigned" (they just weren't counted in that upper Profile section).

All you have to do, is click the EDIT link and re-assign each (individually - which takes some time depending on how many you have to go through) to the position and company that they best are categorized within.  Which is exactly what I did.  It's not cheating, it's actually more accurate and helpful to anyone who really wants to get an honest picture of my experience.

For a guy with fourteen different jobs, my new LinkedIn listing represents the longevity of my good work much more effectively.