According to social media expert Amber Mac, LinkedIn is the social network where small, thoughtless mistakes can directly impact your professional reputation.  Be sure to avoid these LinkedIn faux pas that can work against you when recruiting and building your professional network.

1. Stop using LinkedIn's auto-generated templates. 

Avoid generic messaging at all costs. While LinkedIn does conveniently pre-populate message fields, you will get a whole lot further with your networking efforts if you take the time to start a personal conversation.  If an interesting, personal, or informative conversation is started first off through the invitation, you can greatly improve the positive response rate to your invitations and start building relationships with new connections and potential candidates. Using auto-generated templates can often make you look lazy and careless. Not quite the impression you want to leave on largest professional online network in the world!

2. Stop pushing identical social updates to your LinkedIn status. 

A social media management dashboard can come in handy when you're trying to schedule the same messages or posts to multiple networks. However, it is beneficial to tailor posts to a specific social network.  On networks such as Facebook and Twitter, your voice and word choice can be a little bit casual, fun, and enthusiastic.  If you want to share the same content with your connections within the LinkedIn community, try to tailor it to be a little bit more professional and refined.

3. Stop asking for LinkedIn endorsements from people you don't know. 

In the real world, you would never ask someone you don’t know to write a professional recommendation for you. However, according to Mac, the exact opposite is true on LinkedIn despite the company's mandate that clearly states you should only be connecting with people you know. Requesting an endorsement from a stranger should definitely never happen.  A move like this will make you come across as desperate and immature. Again, not exactly the image you want to portray to your desired professional community or prospective candidates. 

When it comes to LinkedIn, recruiters need to be sure to monitor their behavior and actions on the site to avoid tainting their professional image. To ensure that your reputation is protected, be sure to appropriately tailor your messages, customize your posts, and nurture your connections into relationships.  Who knows, maybe your next LinkedIn connection will be that next great hire that you have been waiting for. 

Like what you've read?  Read more of our posts at: blog.erecruit.com/blog

Originally posted by erecruit