Your online reputation and connections are valuable business assets and should be treated as such. Spotting the fakes is a good first step, but you also want to protect your data and information. The more that we can proactively report these profiles and get them taken down, the better the LinkedIn environment is for all of us. If you believe that the account is fake, be a good social media community member and report it. The bottom line: Real people have connections and relationships with real people. Do you have any mutual shared connections?.Are there some LinkedIn recommendations written, and do they seem genuine and relevant to the rest of the profile?.Does the profile have any followers in addition to connections?.Do they have under 100 total connections?.The final area you can check on a LinkedIn profile is to check out their network.

When you don’t, you could look like a bot. Have they sent you information with overly personal or formal language? (Such as “Hello my dear” or “Dear Sir or Ma’am”)Īs a reminder, this is another one of the great reasons to keep your own account active.Are there any other comments they have written on other people’s posts?.Do their posts have responses and do they engage with those responses?.Do they write a post with their content, or do they only share links without any further information?.Scroll through their recent posts and history to look for these dead giveaways. Profiles are created once, but content is harder and more time intensive to fake. If you see any red flags, then you will want to use their content and network to verify further.Īs a part of this profile test, LinkedIn recently announced a new “About this profile.” According to their announcement, it shows you “when a profile was created and last updated” and “whether the member has verified a phone number and/or work email associated with their account.” Be sure to check this out as a part of your screening process. While some of these things may also be a result of a poorly written profile rather than a fake one, you are looking for patterns. Look for suspicious or incomplete information.Check for internal inconsistencies, like dates or locations that don’t make sense.

Linkedin profile search