Archive for November, 2008

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Sometimes things come up, priorities change, and you find yourself needing to move on.  So what do you do if you need to leave?  LinkedIn makes it easy for you to transfer ownership to someone else.  Go to your group.  Select Manage, Mange this Group, and then click on Change Owners.  When you change ownership, the person you transfer it to must also be a member of the group.

If you’ve joined a group and you see your profile status as “unconfirmed,” this means that you have not yet confirmed a valid email address.  To join a Company Group, you must sign up using a valid company email address, one that has the company name as part of the address.  You will be sent a confirmation at that email address and you will need to click on it so that your “unconfirmed” status will be removed so that you can then join the group.

If you’re doing maintenance on your group, you may want to remove pending requests.  Go to your group, select the group management tool and then click on the link, Requests to Join.  You’ll see a list of people who are waiting to be approved.  You can approve or decline each selection.  When you’re done, click Decline, then confirm.

Not to worry.  It’s easy to add them back.  Contact customer service and provide them with your group name, the name of the person and a link to their profile.  They will be added back to the group.

When you’re uploading a list of new members from a .csv file, you will see the option to Upload and Replace.  This means that the file you’re uploading will write over and replace your entire current membership list.  So use this with caution.

This will affect your pre-approved members and your current members.  The system will ask you if you want to keep members who are not on your new list that you’re uploading.  Follow the instructions carefully.  Just in case, make sure you keep backups of everything that you do and make notes so that you know which file is which.

LinkedIn recently upgraded their system to reflect membership in LinkedIn Groups only.  If your group is not listed when you try to send an invitation, it’s because you originally typed the name in the Edit Profile view.  The reference is not pulling from actual membership in a LinkedIn Group.

Keep in mind that when you join a group you won’t be able to see the members in their network.  However, you’re obviously “birds of a feather” so take advantage of the shared group experience to reach out and make a deeper connection.  Once you do, then you can request to be connected directly to a member so that you can see their connections (if they have that enabled on their settings).

Wondering why you’ve been booted from your Company Group?  If you’ve left the company, that’s one reason why – the group is only for current employees.  If you leave a company and then update your position on your LinkedIn profile, you’ll be automatically deleted from the group.  If you don’t delete your profile, you will probably be flagged that you have left the company and then you will also be removed.  Remember, you can always re-join if you return to the company or if you were mistakenly flagged as no longer employed.

When you create a group on LinkedIn, any and all communications within the group are your responsibility.  LinkedIn will never send any communications to your group.