Recently in the Linked Strategies group, member Thomas Petty shared a blog by Rene Shimada Siegel – LinkedIn: Reading Between the Lines. This blog explored what a LinkedIn profile reveals about you to others and how others perceive your profile. Thank you Thomas for sharing it.

In the past we have written about the importance of having a 100% completed and optimized LinkedIn profile and how to achieve that goal. A number of blogs have also focused on the value of selecting a professional photo for your LinkedIn profile.

Many people use LinkedIn to get to know more about someone they have met, someone they want to do business with or hire, and of course, someone they wish to connect with.  It is as simple as taking a quick look at a person’s LinkedIn profile to let you know what their experience is, what they are doing professionally, and who they are connected with.

Regardless if you are a job seeker, promoting your business, or looking for a joint venture, your LinkedIn profile conveys who you are and what you do.  So what does your LinkedIn Profile Say about you? We’ve broken it down to some elements to help you better understand what your profile can convey to others.

What Your LinkedIn Profile Says About You

Photo:

• Does your LinkedIn profile lack a photo? This is a red flag for many people. It can indicate two things: either this is a fraudulent profile or this person is not serious about using LinkedIn.  How hard is it to get a professional photo? Not very and those who don’t have one seem suspiciously incomplete.
• Is the photo something other than a close-cropped picture of a person?  Besides being a violation of LinkedIn terms and conditions, a non-personal photo says a lot to someone looking at your profile, most of it negative. Family pictures, vacation photos or a non-distinguishable photo of you, bring about feelings of distrust. It is imperative to have a professional profile in a business-centric social network like LinkedIn. Save all the personal, creative, and funny stuff for Facebook.

Connections:

The number of connections a profile has is obvious. A quick look a profile tells you at a quick glance whether a person is a serious player in the LinkedIn world. Logically, the longer a person has been in the workforce, the greater number of connections they should have. If someone has been in the work world for 30 years, but only has 100 connections, something could be wrong. Low connection numbers can mean a number of things:

• The person does not like to make connections and build relationships, therefore connecting with them will not be beneficial
• Their profile is false; they have not worked where they have said and not for the number of years indicated

• They are not interested in using LinkedIn to build their professional network. They do not spend the time on LinkedIn networking. Connecting with them would be futile. Why waste time connecting?

Summary:

The purpose of the LinkedIn Summary is to build trust and credibility. This is where the user can tell the story of who they are, what they excel at, why people work with them, and what they do in their business.  Many users don’t even bother with a Summary and this is a mistake.

• A LinkedIn profile that lacks a summary is flat. Instead of engaging the viewer with a description that communicates who the person is, it leaves just the dry facts found in the experience, skills & expertise, and education.  Boring!
• A summary that is brief (summaries can be 2000 characters), a listing of facts, or an incomplete profile can indicate that the person has no follow through, cannot be bothered, or cannot communicate clearly about what they want.  Certainly not someone you want to connect with or do business with.

Experience:

The Experience portion of the LinkedIn profile resembles a resume. It indicates where a person has worked, for how long, and what their primary duties were.  Surprisingly, some people leave critical information out. You wouldn’t have a resume without detailed information about what you did at a business, you shouldn’t leave it out here either.

• Experience can also indicate whether the person changes jobs frequently or stays in one position or industry for a time; if this person is an entrepreneur who creates new businesses or someone who prefers to work for someone else.

Recommendations:

It is easy to request recommendations for your profile from colleagues and clients. A profile without any recommendations, especially when they have a few dozen or more connections, sends a negative message: no one likes working with this person.  Recommendations should be proportional to the amount of connections you have. There are no hard or fast rules on this one of course. Trust your gut – if someone has been in business for a long time they should have at least a dozen.

•  When a low percentage of recommendations appear on a profile, one reason may be because the user connected with others that they have not worked with directly.  While there are no hard and fast rules, try to have at least one recommendation per 50-100 connections.

Overall Profile:

Spelling and grammatical errors can be a red flag. It is important to note that many people who use LinkedIn, English is not their native tongue and it can be challenging to write in English. Many people who are native English speakers have issues writing English!

Your LinkedIn profile is an indicator of who you are as a professional. You would never attend a networking event dressed in stained and wrinkled clothes, or go to an interview or client meeting with ill-prepared documents. Just because LinkedIn is an online medium, does not make it any less important. Optimization of a LinkedIn profile is worth every LinkedIn user’s time and effort.

Now take a moment and look at your LinkedIn profile. What haven’t you filled out? What have you not optimized? Have a friend look at your profile and tell you what it says about you and who you want to work with. It may be tough to hear, but take the criticism and do something about it. Remember, your LinkedIn profile is like you, a work in progress. Make sure to go back every now and then and tweak it as necessary.

What are some examples of LinkedIn profiles that had you shaking your head or deciding not to connect with someone? What can you share about making your profile stand out?