LinkedIn has grown up to be the most important & popular professional networking portal & has evolved as the most sought after job & career related networking. It is popular among employer & employees & has become a lively place where both ends of the corporate sector interact.
Whether you are looking for a job, connecting with influencer &/or networking for your business, customer &/or supply chain, LinkedIn takes your career to the next level. The first step to build your professional brand on LinkedIn is completing your profile, updating it & writing a summary that details your career story.
Once you are done, sit back & watch professionals visit & review your profile. The best part is that the LinkedIn feature enables you to know who visited your profile(it comes with premium service). Everyone who may visit your profile would have their own rationale-networking, following up your feeds( provided you post credible & relevant content ) &/or looking to hire/get hired. We are going to share how you can leverage on this awesome feature & convert strangers into full blown professional connections that will help you augment your career to new heights.
If someone viewed your LinkedIn profile, they must be use one or more of the following tools:
- Following your feeds
- Stay in touch with the sidebar.
- Regular search-search for keywords, function, industry, company etc.
- Recruiter tools( recruiters are invisible to you)
Irrespective of the tool anyone uses, views of your profile is a good sign that someone is interested in your profile & would like to learn more about you.
How can you view who visited your profile?
You are more than interested to know who stumbled upon your profile. The amount of information available depends upon whether you are using basic free or premium membership.
Premium membership( 1 month free trial). comes with extra features that makes it worth giving it a thought. How is the basic plan different from premium? Let us figure out. With basic plan, you can
- See up to 5 results of who has viewed your profile
- The number of visits to your profile
- The number of times you’ve appeared in search results
With premium account, you can
- See unlimited number of people who have viewed your profile.
- See other information such as trends in viewership.
However information you can see about people who have visited your profile depends upon the person’s privacy settings, not your premium membership. Having a premium account does not guarantee you access to all the information related to the person who has viewed your profile if the person has restricted access to profile through privacy settings.
Should I contact someone who has visited my profile?
So there will be a bunch of folks who, for various reasons, might be interested in your profile. So what should be your strategy, should you message them or connect with them? Or rather do nothing?
It all depends who is looking at your profile. It can an old colleague who might want to be in touch with you, a hiring manager or someone who can potentially help you with your next career move.
Evaluating why they viewed or how they found your profile will determine if or how to respond. I am discussing here 3 scenarios & what should be your action.
- Hiring Manager views your profile: Hiring manager for that job that you recently applied to check out your profile. It is a positive sign since the hiring manager wants to know more about you. However do not get overexcited & keep patience. It is important to realise that it is just a step in the hiring process. The hiring manager wants to learn more about your credentials before you are called for an interview. Even if the hiring manager does not connect with you, at least you have a name of the recruiter you can connect with.
- Person who visited your profile works with your dream company: If person who recently viewed your profile works in a company that has been your target or if you see some connection, failing to connect them would result in missed career opportunity.You should not wait for miracle to happen, If you want something, you need to ask for it. The worst can be they won’t apply at all. You have very little to lose but you should not leave any stone unturned when you are crafting a message.Start by mentioning why you’d like to connect & how you might be helpful to them. You can either reference that they’ve viewed your profile or mention the reason for reaching out. A specimen message could be :
Hi Robert,
Trust this message finds you well. I see you’re working as Regional Manager for Sales at Company XYZ. I’ve admired their work for quite some time, so I thought I’d connect with you here! Looking forward to keeping in touch.
Best, Jones
3. Not sure why they viewed your profile: If you have no idea who visited your profile, check out their profile in return to find out you share something common with the person. You might have graduated from the same school , have worked for the same company( at different location or time period) or have mutual connections. These can be good reasons to initiate a conversation. However, it would not be a good idea to use the default LinkedIn message to send a connection request. Make sure to include all connections, interests or experiences you share in your message. Focus on a common bond between the two of you and make it clear why you wish to connect/engage. A specimen message could be:
Dear Robert,
Hope you’re doing well! I would like to connect with you because I’m always open to hearing about great opportunities and will be willing to help you with any of your searches
Best, Jones
When should you reach out?
Let’s assume a hiring manager that you want to connect with . However you should not leave an impression that you’re desperate. Stalking people on social media can leave an awful impression. So take your time and wait a day or two before sending a message will do the job.
