2 ways to review others' #LinkedIn profiles

You get a name.

You need to prepare for a meeting, phone call, email, any form of communication with that person.

How helpful would it be to know where  you two have common experience, friends, interests, etc. to make the call most productive with this information?

Add to this, you either:

1. want them to know or don’t mind if they know you looked at their LinkedIn profile or
2. don’t want them to know you looked.

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From alternative 1. above, you already know how to search for them on LinkedIn. Since you are already signed in to LinkedIn, they will be able to see you looked at their profile.

On the top of my LinkedIn home page I see this top most box and when I click on the blue number “10” I get more detail in the lower boxes of the people who viewed my profile in the past x days. Move the cursor to the period of time in question for the pertinent data. In the example below, 293 views in the past 90 days.

Anything in blue means there is date beneath it just waiting to be clicked. You can drill  for more information on those who have not covered their tracks and don’t mind you looked at their profile.

Just a precaution: they will see you looked at their profile too.

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Alternatively, as in alternative 2. above, you can look at the profile of the person of interest without betraying you looked.

Here’s how and it’s easy. Sign off of LinkedIn by mousing over your little picture at the top right corner of any LinkedIn page and click “Sign Out” from the dropdown box:

Next go to your favorite browser and “google” that person’s name and click on the search result that shows they have a LinkedIn profile.

Then you can see their LinkedIn public profile and garner some (but not all the data they have on LinkedIn that is reserved on their private profile for their connections, but it’s a start!)

They will not know you looked at them.

Example using a search for my LinkedIn public profile:

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Ordinarily, you should not need to “hide” a profile view as LinkedIn is predicated on the assumption you want to share your information and that you want to see who’s been looking at you.

But in a story relayed to me by a friend the other day, I understand his reluctance to be seen researching the person of interest. He asked me how and I figure you may want to be aware of this in case you need it for a similar reason.

Now you know.