My LinkedIn Profile: Should I Include My Photo?
There has been some heated discussion this morning on a LinkedIn Group Discussion Forum that I belong to concerning this topic (if you haven’t been maximizing your LinkedIn Group membership please see my advice here). One of the Group members attended a LinkedIn seminar where the presenter said that those in transition should NOT include a photo as part of their LinkedIn profile, the reason being that it would be an Equal Opportunity violation if a recruiter selects you after seeing what you look like. Furthermore, the presenter went on to say that most recruiters actually restrict their search to candidates that don’t have photos.
For those of you in transition who may be reading this blog, let me start out by saying that first of all I am not nor have ever been a recruiter. But I have used LinkedIn while in transition and have taken similar seminars as well as attended webinars put on by recruiters and career coaches. One thing I can say with confidence is that just as every career coach or resume writer will give you a different spin on how your resume should be written, there will be many divergent opinions as to how to utilize LinkedIn.
My own idea about displaying a photo in your profile, which is the same as in giving and receiving recommendations, is that they show that you are real. There are many fake profiles out there, and anyone can say that they worked at a company and put it on their profile. The photo shows that you are authentic, and the recommendations should back up what you say about yourself and you career history. It’s as simple as that. After all, LinkedIn will prompt you to upload a photo in order to get to 100% profile completeness, and considering that LinkedIn’s main customers are recruiters, don’t you think that they would request LinkedIn to disable the feature if it could create that big of a problem?
I have been contacted by recruiters on LinkedIn on several occasions over the last year for potential positions which proves the theory wrong, unless these recruiters were not being “careful”. Did you know if you google someone’s name, and they had added their photo to their Google Profile, that the photo will show up in the search results? Does that automatically disqualify this candidate? I tend not to think so… (you can google my name and see an example of this at the bottom of the search results page)
Now I could be wrong since I am not in the field of HR, so it would be great to get a lot of recruiter’s opinions on the subject. Please feel free to comment and give us all more insight!
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Neal Schaffer is recognized as a leader in helping businesses and professionals embrace and strategically leverage the potential of social media. An award-winning published author, frequent speaker at social media events, and an avid blogger, Neal is President of
