LinkedIn Home Page: What Would You Like to See?

Your LinkedIn home page is your dashboard. And just like a car dashboard, it should be designed to show you the most important activity. Unlike your car, where you have no control of what shows up on the dashboard, LinkedIn allows you quite a bit of leeway in choosing your dashboard components.

One of the challenges of the home page is the more active you are on LinkedIn (making connections, joining groups, following companies, etc.), the busier your home page becomes.

Here are some strategies to help you customize your home page, minimize the clutter, and have easy access to the information that will give you the greatest return on your LinkedIn investment.

Customize the updates you see on your home page

Scroll over your name on the top right of your home page and select “Settings” from the drop-down menu. Then select “Account” on the bottom left. Next, click “Customize the updates you see on your home page.” The 18 individual settings can then be turned on or off. They fall into the following major categories: General, Profile & Recommendations, Questions & Answers, Jobs, Events, Polls, Groups, Applications, Company Pages, and News.

In this settings section you can also choose how many updates you want to appear on your home page (10, 15, 20 or 25).

These important choices will tidy up your dashboard, and don’t worry–it’s easy to adjust them if you change your mind. For example, I used to get an update showing all the connections my connections were making. I did find it useful, but it just got to be too many every day; so I dropped that from my updates. However, I may consider bringing that one back at some point.

Filter the updates you see on your home page

You can filter the updates you see on your home page by scrolling over “All Updates.” There are lots of options for picking the updates that are important to you at that moment (e.g., groups, companies, jobs, etc.). This is not a permanent setting. It only applies to your current session and always resets to “All Updates.”

This temporary filtering is especially helpful if you have a very large network. The amount of profile changes, connection changes, and other updates can become overwhelming. Simply turn them off in your daily feed to avoid the clutter and then access them when you have a few free moments.

Hide Individual Status Updates

If you are annoyed by someone’s updates (maybe they’re posting information that is more fitting for Facebook or Twitter), simply scroll over the top right corner of the individual status update and click “Hide.” From that point forward you will no longer receive updates from that individual.

Show Your Applications

All of your applications show up on your home page by default. If you click the X in the upper right corner, they will drop off your home page. To reinstate them, choose “More” on the top toolbar, select the appropriate application, and make the adjustment on the application’s settings page.

LinkedIn Today

I don’t know about you, but this really annoys me. Some people just love it, but I hit the “Hide” button. I’m on LinkedIn because I want to see what my network is up to, not to see what LinkedIn thinks I should be reading. Call me a curmudgeon and disagree with me all you like. I can take it!

To learn about other important LinkedIn settings, check out “The Five Most Critical LinkedIn Settings.”

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