By Lynne Williams

In case you are wondering, the portmanteau #Juneteenth is a hashtag used on LinkedIn. People are writing articles and including this hashtag to be found by others who want to read what people are saying about this momentous day of June 19th day in 1865 when slavery ended in Galveston, Texas.

What else is new on LinkedIn? The menu bar is now black instead of dark gray. Speculation is that it changed for Black Lives Matter, but there not seem to be an announcement about this, though LinkedIn did make a BLM statement. The change of the menu bar just magically appeared as black this week.

Headlines used to be limited to 120 characters on the desktop, but you might have been in the recent rollout and now can expand it. LinkedIn has not yet updated their knowledge base article on this change to announce the official number of characters, but others have posted that you may have up to 220 characters.

Posts now have six options:

1) celebrate a teammate (welcome a new teammate or give kudos to someone)

2) find an expert (in accounting, coaching & mentoring, design, marketing, and other)

3) share a profile with your network or search for a friend or former coworker, or connection)

4) add a job (create a new post or add a link)

5) create a poll (as long as it’s not political, or medical information or other sensitive data)

6) offer help (general, referrals, career coaching, resume reviews, introductions, volunteer work, or other)

Some other LinkedIn changes are below:

• People Also Viewed has increased from 10 to 20.
• Hashtag displays are being reconfigured.
• COVID-19 themed banners are coming.
• Away messages for premium users are coming.
• Broadcast link field for online events is coming.
• A new search user interface is coming.
• Image cropping is coming.

Need some visuals of the above? Here’s a great post from Andy Foote in Chicago. Andy also includes the reminder that LinkedIn will shorten the URLs in your posts if they are more than 26 characters.

Missed the previous article on Black Lives Matter: No One Should Have to Hide Who They Are on LinkedIn Click here!  

Upcoming June Events

All of the events are held virtually on Zoom. Register as noted on the events tab on the website and join our meetup (see step one). To attend these meetings for free, become a Bronze or BENG member.

• 6/20 LinkedIn Part 3 of 3 (3-hour workshop) org
• 6/22 Career Confusion Got You Down?
• 6/22 Hw to Live Above the Job Search Willies
• 6/23 A Legal and HR Look at the COVID-19 Market on Jobs, Safety, and Income Security
• 6/23 Business Executives Networking Group (BENG) Meeting
• 6/24 PowerThinking Resilience Building Call
• 6/25 Career Success Group Meeting
• 6/25 Business Executives Networking Group (BENG) Meeting
• 6/25 Value Proposition 3.0
• 6/29 Career Success Group Meeting
• 6/30 Leveraging Your LinkedIn Network to Get Your Next Job Opportunity

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Lynne Williams is the Executive Director of the Philadelphia Area Great Careers Group. Contact Lynne by phone at 484-393-2951, email at director@greatcareersphl.org, on social media @GreatCareersPHL and #GreatCareersPHL and connect on LinkedIn at www.linkedin.com/in/lynnewilliams. Check out the new website!

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