Fast way to know if a LinkedIn connection request is a fake

Note: This post represents my personal views and not necessarily those of my employer.

Like me, many of my fellow uber-sourcers and recruiters use LinkedIn a lot. Some like inmails or other features, but we mostly agree the main talent sourcing benefit is that it gives you the greatest level of search specificity against a critical mass of people. Knowing how to search and filter well in your LinkedIn searches has become increasingly vital as the number of fake profiles has proliferated on the site (also a problem on Facebook, Twitter and other social networks).

Unfortunately, one place you currently can't eliminate the fakes is in your received direct connection invitations. LinkedIn has yet to implement its impressive search functionality within your LI invitations inbox to help you sift through all the fakes there (wouldn't that be nice?!), but at least you can report the fakes.

As a long-time LinkedIn user (I was profiled as one of the first "superconnectors" in a Business 2.0 print magazine article in Dec. 2006 with one of LI's co-founders - archived here), I am repeatedly asked by many recruiters two questions:

1) How can you tell if a LI profile is a fake? (I'll share my fast method in a second.)

2) How can I report fakes? (Currently, it's not intuitive when you're viewing received invitations.)

On #1, if I am suspicious about the profile -- common clues (but not the only ones) are (A) no profile information other than the minimum required fields (not by itself a disqualifier, of course); (B) obviously fake data on the profile (e.g., under Education, it lists a BBA from Yale University -- hello, Yale doesn't offer that undergrad degree!); (C) apparent mismatch on employers and job titles (e.g., I know who the CEO of Microsoft is, and you're not him) or locations (e.g., it's unlikely a small US employer has employees in Abu Dhabi), among many other tell-tale signs -- then there's a fast and easy method that proves for me it's worth having LI investigate:

In the Google Chrome browser (might be available in other browsers, but not natively at present), right mouse click on the LI profile image and select "Search Google for this Image". Unlike many Google searches, these "Pages that include matching images" rarely returns more than a couple dozen results. Most of these results will be other LI profile pages where that person is linked (the hyperlinked result title will end with " | LinkedIn" so you can skip those.

But pay attention to the results with a *different* hyperlinked title! If you click any of those, you will be taken to a result on some other website containing that image. In most cases, you can quickly tell who the real person is, and it's almost always *not* the person claimed on the LI profile! For example, I recently received a connection request from "Mateo Gutierrez" and was quickly able to determine from this method that the picture is really of Miguel Ayllon or, just as commonly, you will find the suspicious picture originates from some stock photography modeling website.

Which brings us to the answer to question #2: How would I report this for investigation? If you are on the Invitations / See All page in LI's top right navigation, you need to click the person's hyperlinked name (hovering over the name changes its color to light blue) which takes you to their full profile. Now mouse over the very small black downward-pointing triangle in the top section to the right of their photo -- it's just to the right of the blue ("Accept invitation") and gray buttons and just to the left of their number of direct connections. As you're hovering over the mini-triangle, a menu will automatically expand: click the next-to-last choice, "Block or report". From here, the remaining steps are clear. Enter whatever details you have to help LI investigate the alleged misrepresentation (e.g., pasting the URL containing the real person's image is helpful).

At this point, hopefully LI will get the account holder to stop misrepresenting himself or take the account down altogether. If it remains there, you could also report it to https://twitter.com/fauxlinkedin (a resource that other recruiters told me about a few years ago).

I'm sharing these thoughts because I want LinkedIn to be a better place for us to do our jobs. Having to sift through umpteen fake profiles helps nobody. As in many parts of our lives, if we keep bringing problems to light, it should lead to better solutions to address them.

I hope the above helps in some way and you'll join me in continuing to work towards making LinkedIn a better resource for all! If you have other thoughts, I'd love for you to share them in the Comments below.