Is it really necessary to have a profile picture on LinkedIn? After all, most people don’t include one with their resume right? The answer to the question is yes, it’s extremely important to have a profile picture on your LinkedIn profile. Here’s the main reasons why:
-To make your profile unique
-To make your profile more personalized
-To help the person viewing your profile feel more welcomed.
According to Kinsta.com a recent analysis of LinkedIn statistics, as of 2021 there are roughly 756 million users of the platform. That’s about the same number of people you’ll find walking on the boardwalk at a Jersey shore town this summer too….okay that part might be a slight overestimation. But 756 million users is a lot of people. Let’s take a look at the reasons why you should have a profile picture above and find out why it’s so important.
Make Your Profile More Unique
With the amount of people that are on LinkedIn, the last thing you want to do blend into the crowd. The point of a LinkedIn profile is to enhance your resume and include items that you can’t include on a basic resume. Unless you’re an actor or photographer or a niche area in the entertainment industry you most likely aren’t including a picture in your resume. So to make a LinkedIn profile without a picture is counter-productive. And, unless you are a twin who looks exactly the same as another person on LinkedIn, including a profile picture adds uniqueness to your profile. (If you do have a twin that looks exactly like you, maybe wear a different shirt or something in your picture.) A LinkedIn profile should be a tool to separate you from everyone else in the world, so including a picture is essential to doing this.
Make Your Profile More Personalized
Have you ever come across a profile on any social media platform where the person doesn’t have a picture? Doesn’t it make you feel like you’re looking at the page of someone who isn’t human? (I would have used the word robot but for some reason my son gets scared when you say the R word so I took it out of my vocabulary. Maybe he knows something about the future robot apocalypse or something). Anyway, back to looking at the page of someone without a picture. When you’re viewing that page, or even worse, get a message from a no picture person, you tend to think they aren’t real and quickly move on to the next thing. For someone without a picture, they have to go above and beyond in the rest of their profile details to wow someone viewing the page. It’s really just making it harder on yourself to be productive on LinkedIn if the first thing people see is a gray circle by your name.
Make the Person Viewing Your Profile Feel More Welcomed
Imagine you’re on a dating website and you get a message from someone without a profile picture. Are you going to feel the urge to respond to that message? I’d go out on a limb and say probably not. Having a face to go with a name makes the person on the other end of the message feel more comfortable with the idea of talking to you and finding out more about your background. Especially in today’s day and age with scammers lurking around the corners of LinkedIn, a profile picture at least gives you the sense that hey, this person is real. I will make a note and say I have been spammed by people with pictures too but those are a little less common. Having a professional, smiling picture for your LinkedIn page makes a potential employer feel more comfortable about who you are before even reading your resume.
So if you are someone on the fence about putting up a LinkedIn profile picture, maybe you don’t feel like you’re photogenic or you don’t want random people to see what you look like, you should really rethink your stance. If you want to get even crazier, you can add a couple pictures as well, which will make you seem even better-rounded and more like a person. Again it’s about building your profile to the fullest extent and a huge aspect of this is including a picture. So find a friend or make it a good selfie and get that picture up ASAP!
The Workin' Parent 