How to Find out Who is Looking at Your LinkedIn Profile

Internet has been lately become one of the indispensable tool in the search for that lucrative, ever aspiring job opportunity. There is no doubt that there are hundreds of sites that help a prospective employer or an employee to find that right opportunity. However, LinkedIn has lately come in the forefront as a great social medium for interacting with fellow job seekers as well as prospective employers. The mere fact that LinkedIn boasts of over 176 million members hold testimony to the fact that it has become the one stop trusted site for job seekers and employee seekers alike. It is no hidden fact that like Facebook, LinkedIn is quickly serving as a great medium for professionals to stay connected socially as well as professionally. Many professionals and organisation find it more appealing to search for prospective employers/employees using LinkedIn as compared to other major job search sites like monster etc. Being a LinkedIn member one can share information with fellow users and showcase to them the expertise and skills that may have been impossible to highlight to the world otherwise. By default, LinkedIn helps in bringing together the professionals who share common credentials or professional background on the same platform. Various types of information may be shared on LinkedIn:

User Information: It is this information that other professionals and organisations that share some come credentials happen to see. This information primarily includes the profile that one creates for oneself as well the various discussions that a user may opt to follow or opt to participate in. There are options to opt for that LinkedIn may offer which includes features such as “Profile Stats”. It is this feature which enable a user to know who viewed their profile and will be shown to other users when a user visits their profile page. LinkedIn provides users with control on what they want to share with the world.
Communication: A user may like to communicate with professionals sharing the same professional interests and background. This communication may be one to one or may be through the various groups that users elect to participate in. again a user has the full control on how much information he wants to expose and can change this at any time.

Considering the vastness of internet and the sheer number of users who use LinkedIn on a daily basis, it becomes all the more important to understand privacy and security offered by LinkedIn. An interesting feature that users find it most useful and indispensable at times is “Who’s Viewed Your Profile”, which becomes visible on the right hand side of the message box on the home page.This feature is often used to gain an insight into the statistics for people who have looked at a user’s profile as well as the number of times the profile has been visited. It gives an insight into the industry and professional background of the users who visits your profile. The user has full freedom to change the way the profile becomes visible to others by going to the Settings page.There are three different ways that exist through which one may know, who has viewed his LinkedIn profile recently depending on the privacy settings that are set on the profile.

Name and headline:One may elect not to show anything from one’s own profile
Title and industry: Reveal selective characteristics such as title and industry. Title and heading may be shown or one may opt to show anonymous profile characteristics.
Anonymous:Profile stats won’t be visible to a LinkedIn user if the privacy setting is made anonymous.

Upgrading to a premium account makes the profile stats as visible. If a user opts to remain anonymous through his settings page, even a premium user having the ability to see profile stats, would not be able to view such a user. A user having a free basic account with the anonymous setting enabled, won’t be able to see the profile stats widget on the homepage. What this means to the end user is that if the user elects to remain invisible through his settings, he would not be able to see this feature in LinkedIn. A basic account user would be able to see only five entries through this feature. If he wants to see everyone, then an upgrade of the account may be necessary.

Whatever be the account level, it is important to note that one can view as much information about anybody visiting his profile as the visitor wants to be shared.It may also be noted that this feature is based on time based algorithm and is updated every 24 hours. So users who may have visited a profile a few weeks earlier may not appear altogether in this widget and the profiles appearing now may stop appearing after some time.