Search for Yourself – How Many of You Are There?

Steve Tylock

Back to the future of 2010 – if you look for yourself on LinkedIn, how many of you will you find?

It’s an important item to figure out because if you happen to have multiple profiles on LinkedIn, you’re saying something about yourself and your abilities to manage this tool.

Number One Issue

This is the single issue that happens most often.

If I speak to a room with more than fifteen people in it, someone will have a duplicate account.

I believe at one event I found an individual with four separate accounts…

Search by name

You ought to be easy enough to find, right?  You know your own first and last name – submit that in an advanced search.

If your name happens to be more common, use the location to limit the search to where you currently live, or where you have lived in the past.

Is there just one of you? Good!

Doppelgangers

That’s just a fancy term for “look alike”, and you can follow this link to read more about doppelgangers on Wikipedia…

But if you show up more than once, it’s not a good thing.

If you have access to the account because you remember the password or can reset it and still have access to that email account you’re in luck.  The LinkedIn settings page has a “close your account” section that can do the job for you. (but just for your sanity – backup your profile and connections on your “good” account before you do that just in case please…)

Otherwise you’ve got to contact LinekdIn customer support to get their help.

Confusion, bad information, or a mixed message

This information is worth repeating because it’s important – if you intend to use LinkedIn to convey a message, wht are you saying by having an older, out of date profile up on the site in addition to your “real” message?

In the best of cases, the extra account is “close” to what you’d like to say – but then won’t people be wondering what the heck you’re doing with an extra account?  Does that support your competence factor?

Get it corrected – today.

To your continued success,

steve
—
Steven Tylock
http://www.linkedinpersonaltrainer.com
http://www.linkedin.com/in/stevetylock

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4 Comments

  1. Hi Steve! A very interesting survey. I’m curious to see what the distribution of your viewing audience (who responds to surveys) might be… :-)

    By the way, I saw you at the last Digital Rochester event but did not take the opportunity to say hello and introduce myself. I’ll try to make a point of doing so at the February event.

    Best wishes until then,
    Craig Lambrecht

  2. Craig,

    Thanks for the note – for posterity’s sake you’re commenting on the current poll which is what kind of LinkedIn user are you? Heavy / Medium / Light with LinkedIn vs Frequent / Occasional / Infrequent in-person.

    Yes – as mentioned in my very first poll, we can make no great earth shattering realizations because MOST PEOPLE REFUSE TO PARTICIPATE IN SURVEYS;-)

    So at best we have a glimmer of an idea, and I always try to find the most interesting angle to look at that glimmer from.

    So please vote today so that you can skew the results in your favor!-)

    Check back at the end of the month, or better yet, sign up for the feed (top right) and I’ll let you know when a new article comes out – including the survey results.

    steve
    (And do say hi next time – glad you got out)

  3. An excellent suggestion. I did find a duplicate profile – alas it was one with a lower user ID but no followers and really outdated info. I went ahead and closed the account per your suggestion. I wonder why I never thought to do a search on myself. Thanks for the excellent tip.

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