LinkedIn, more than any other business networking site has a truly global reach. There are now over 60 million users throughout the world and this is growing by a staggering 2 million every month (LinkedIn claim that a new user signs up every second).

LinkedIn can be used for many different purposes (finding a job, finding new employees, market research and business development to name a few) but it is essentially a networking tool. Mastering visibility through effective networking techniques is key to success with LinkedIn (whatever your objectives) but there are increasing challenges presented by the international and multicultural nature of this network.

I was reminded of this fact recently over a coffee with Jacco Valkenburg when we met in London. Jacco asked me how a Recruiter in the UK would react if they saw that a potential target candidate hadn’t ticked the ‘career opportunities’ box in their ‘interested in’ section (at the bottom of their profile).

My answer was very clear – they would ignore it and approach the candidate anyway! Jacco was clearly surprised and stated that in the Netherlands this was considered to be poor practice and that if a user had not ticked this then they should be left alone. My argument was that this tick box is only ever noticed when someone first opens their account and that could have been years ago so how do we know it is still accurate?

Cultural challenges with LinkedIn