The LinkedIn blog has alerted me to the fact that “profile completeness” has undergone a transformation – and sure enough, my profile is now only 90% complete!
Gasp!
What is one to do?…
Profile completeness goes way back
LinkedIn has had a “profile completeness” factor for quite a long time. I’ve written about reaching for 100%, and the simple answer is that in general, doing the things that made a profile complete caused a user to have a better experience.
But the “completeness” doesn’t mean a thing.
Nothing.
Zip.
Zilch.
Nada.
I’ve panned other advice givers for including it in their lists of top ten tips…
Readers have had complete profiles
And based on survey results, it seems that readers of this blog (in general) have had more complete profiles than you might find walking down the street.
(Though I don’t know how many profiles you would find walking down the street – I think that depends on the street;-)
Those blasted skills
And this is perhaps the reasoning behind the change – I don’t think many people have included “skills” on their profile.
Not that I have much to do with it, but I don’t have a very high opinion of the skills feature – as most recently noted last December.
But according to LinkedIn, having mad skills and expertise is now part of completeness, and having recommendations is not. (Me – I’d have continued to urge people to get recommendations – but LinkedIn seems to feel that is out of a user’s control and no longer important…)
So – if you’re looking to sort people, having the group self-select and rank themselves is nice, right? (But in the process, it might just dehumanize them too, wouldn’t it?)
Anyway, if you’re intent on making the feature work, what better way to get people to add skills than to state very loudly that they are important. People will want to get a 100% complete profile by adding them…
Doomed to incompleteness
And this is perhaps my fate.
I used to tell people that the completeness factor was mostly irrelevant, but it’s true, I was also happy to display my 100% complete status. Since I’m not likely to ever add skills to my profile, I’ll have to create an “incomplete profile” scarlet letter and display that so everyone will know…
Hey, that’s a thought though – the group for “People with incomplete profiles”. We’d only let members in if their profile was less than 100% complete, and kick them out if they ever completed it.
Yes – that and the G.R.O.S.S. club are the next two that I’m going to create;-)
To your continued success,
steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock