You may not have seen it yet, but LinkedIn has revamped its user interface recently, in part to make desktop and mobile versions of LinkedIn more consistent. If the new interface hasn't come to your LinkedIn account yet, it will soon. Here's a brief overview of the changes, many of which users apparently don't find positive, based on feedback I've seen on LinkedIn and elsewhere.
Navigation
The navigation bar at the top of every page on LinkedIn has changed; instead of just using words for navigation, LinkedIn has added some icons and has moved some things around, which might make some of your favorite LikedIn features a bit hard to find. In addition, all of the icons now appear to the right of the search box, rather than some appearing below the search box, as in the old interface.
The new basic navigation buttons/menu items are:
- Home
- My Network
- Jobs
- Messaging
- Notifications
- Me
- There is a bit of a separation, and then a new item, More (Update: 5/17: this item is now "Work")
Only the Me and More menu (which actually says Business in my LinkedIn account, although others have advised that theirs is called Tools) Work menu items have dropdowns that contain sub-items.
Under Me, you'll find your Profile (there are no longer separate links to view and edit your Profile), your account and privacy settings, Manage links to manage your Company Pages and job postings on LinkedIn if you have them, and the sign-out link, as well as the link to the LinkedIn Help Center.
The More Work drop-down (which has an icon that looks like a square made up of nine squares) includes items that used to be found under the Interests tab in the old LinkedIn interface, including Groups, Learning (lynda.com courses), Slideshare, Groups, LinkedIn Profinder, Advertising, Post a Job, and LinkedIn Lookup. (More about some of these items in future posts).
Profile
In addition to the design changes noted below, LinkedIn has made several other changes to your Profile. Some of these changes are unwelcome in my opinion, including:
- Now those viewing your Profile can only see the first few lines (approx. 200 characters) of your Profile Summary, rather than the entire Summary - that means it's even more important than ever to make sure that your Summary provides valuable information right up front so that visitors click on the See More link to see the rest of your Summary.
- LinkedIn has implemented the "see more" concept on other aspects of your Profile as well; the descriptions under each of your positions other than your current position in the Experience section won't show unless the visitor clicks the view more link, and only three "featured" skills and endorsements show on your Profile without clicking on a similar link. Recommendations are treated similarly.
- Several of the customized sections that help your Profile stand out, including Honors and Awards, Organizations, and Publications have now been grouped together under Accomplishments, and the new layout places less emphasis on these items.
- LinkedIn has removed the ability to customize your Profile by rearranging the order of sections.
Home Page
LinkedIn's Home page has also gotten a makeover. A mini-snapshot of your Profile on the left, including your name, photo, professional headline and statistics for Who's Viewed Your Profile and Views of posts. The look of the network update (share an article, photo, or update) and Publisher (write an article) boxes has also been modified.
Design changes
When you view your LinkedIn Profile now, you'll see that LinkedIn has made a number of design changes to the Profile. These include a change in the dimensions of your header image (if you were using one), and a switch from a square Profile photo to a round one.
LinkedIn has added a header to some pages (such as Groups, for example), which appears under the black navigation bar. That header, which varies in size depending on the page, still incorporates LinkedIn blue, but appears to have an hombre effect, beginning with the dark blue toward the left of the screen, and moving to more of a teal color to the right of the screen.
Features eliminated
Along with these changes, LinkedIn has eliminated some features, including some features that I found extremely helpful. One of those features was tagging; you no longer have the ability to 'tag' your contacts in order to filter or to send targeted messages with a free account. Now the only options you have for your contacts are to send them a message or to remove them. The elimination of tagging also restricts your ability to easily sort through your contacts; the only remaining options are to sort by first name, last name or recently added.
The How You Rank feature is also no longer available, as is the View Profile As feature, which would allow you to see how your Profile looks to others on LinkedIn. You are also now unable to customize the web links you add to your Profile the way you did in the past - if you had customized them before, visitors to your Profile will now see long URLs with your customized name in parentheses.
Perhaps most disconcerting for power users of LinkedIn is the loss of Advanced Search features, and the Alumni search is no longer there (although you can still find alumni, just not quite as easily).
Temporarily unavailable
As of this writing, some LinkedIn features are listed as "temporarily unavailable," which seems to imply that they'll be returning. These include the ability to export your resume, sort updates in your feed on your Home page, and the Profile Strength feature. (Update, May 2017: Profile Strength is back, but somewhat different now - you can find it under the "top card" information on your Profile (below your Summary). It will walk you through the completion steps until LinkedIn deems your Profile complete, and then you'll receive an "All Star" rating).
Additional Changes
LinkedIn has also made changes to the My Network tab, the Inbox, Notifications, and Company Pages. Stay tuned for future posts that will go into more detail about these and other changes.
Hi Antonina,
I'm not sure why you would want to create pseudo accounts on LinkedIn - not to mention that doing so would violate their terms of use - and I'm not quite sure what you mean by securing your account.
If you mean that you want to perform some activities on LinkedIn in a way that hides your identity (for example, so that people can't see that you are viewing their Profile), you can do so in your Settings. Go to settings (under Me) and click on Privacy. There you can change the settings to choose whether you are visible or viewing in private mode. Keep in mind that if you view others' Profiles in private mode, you won't get information on who has viewed your Profile.
You can also change privacy settings for who can see your connections, indicate whether you want the "viewers of this Profile also viewed" setting turned on, block or hide people, and more.
If this doesn't answer your question, let me know!
Posted by: Allison C. Shields, Legal Ease Consulting, Inc. | June 29, 2017 at 11:10 AM
How do you secure your profile such that you dont have to create pseudo accounts every now and then
Posted by: Antonina | June 29, 2017 at 04:12 AM
Professionalism is fundamental on LinkedIn. Well articulated skill sets will give an individual an edge above the rest!
Posted by: Evans Wepukhulu | June 28, 2017 at 08:18 AM
Stupid A-holes
View As is valuable
Now, every user must create a new fake profile to see what their profile looks like to other...
I guess it's a way of doubling users over night...
retards
Posted by: Matt | May 25, 2017 at 05:11 AM
nice blog.
Posted by: maryjane | May 18, 2017 at 12:22 AM
Sorry for the late response, David, for some reason this comment got lost in the shuffle and I'm just seeing it now! Unfortunately, a lot of the analytics that you used to get on LinkedIn appear to have disappeared (at least for free accounts). You can still see some information, but it is a lot more limited. If you go to your activity and navigate to an individual article, you will see the # of clicks below the article. Click on that to get information about views, likes and comments, as well as a little information about who is clicking and how your article was found. But you are no longer seeing trending information or clicks over time.
You can also see the same information if you navigate to the article itself and click on the trending arrow to the far right at the to of the article.
Posted by: Allison C. Johs, Legal Ease Consulting, Inc. | May 09, 2017 at 05:15 PM
I haven't been able to find the charts that they used to have that showed how many people viewed your articles each day and over periods of months and even a year or more. Did they disappear or are they hiding somewhere that I haven't yet found?
Posted by: David Leffler | February 10, 2017 at 11:45 PM