LinkedIn - can people tell who's visited their page?

[Anonymous]

I'd like to surf around and see which of my former colleagues are still employed at my old company, but some I wasn't really friends with... so I'd be mortified if just by clicking their page sent some tripwire email notification somehow that (my name here) visited your profile at 22:13 03/31/09. Does it work like that, or is there a strong degree of anonymity unless you go out of your way to "poke" or "friend" that person?

[Anonymous]

I don't know the answer but could you surf anonymously?

[Anonymous]

I believe you have to have the advanced registration (that you pay for) to see actual names. With the basic registration that most people have, you can get a list of who's viewed your profile, but it is only the company name. If you further click on the company, it will sometimes lead to a name but not always. Kind of hard to explain, but if you go to your home page not your profile) and look on the right side of the page, it will say something like "In the past 30 days, XX people have viewed your profile and you have appeared in searches XX times."

[Anonymous]

Has anyone found LinkedIn helpful in terms of their profession/industry, or is it more of a social networking forum?

[Anonymous]

They can see examples of who viewed their page, but it shows place of business, etc, not a name.

Eg, your profile has been viewed by someone at the John Doe law firm.

So they may be able to figure it out. Don't know, but maybe you can do something to turn this off.

[Anonymous]

Bummer... that kind of stickiness is SO annoying. It's like caller ID for the web, but who would really ever reach back out to someone who clicked on their profile? So why track it? I can see the potential "cool factor" to having it, but I also see a bigger "cool factor" for cloaked surfing.

[Anonymous]

I've gotten several job offers via LinkedIn, but I think it's mainly because the industry I work in, actually looks at LinkedIn. That said, I haven't accepted any of the offers I got through there.

[Anonymous]

What about if you google someone and their linkedin link comes up and you click on it, but you never actually log in to linkedin to view their complete information...can someone still tell?

[Anonymous]

DH uses linkedin on a daily basis to find contacts in his industry (finance). His connections show him which of his connection's connections are in the industry and he contacts them to set up a meeting. Its been really great for him.

[Anonymous]

It's also useful if you are looking for a job. After losing his job, my husband has connected with old colleagues and such and gotten a couple of phone interviews.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:It's also useful if you are looking for a job. After losing his job, my husband has connected with old colleagues and such and gotten a couple of phone interviews.

Yes, a former colleague of mine when I was at a different company used LinkedIn to find old colleagues when he decided to make a move. He contacted me and we happened to have a job open in his area, which he interviewed for. I also got connected with a former co-worker who had moved to NYC and was having a hard time finding a job in her area. We weren't close when she was here but I always respected her work. I was able to connect her up with a friend in NYC who may be able to help her.

After these experiences, I decided I needed to pay more attention to my LinkedIn account. It's definitely worthwhile professionally.

[Anonymous]

I find I can usually tell who has visited my linked in page. For example, if someone at XYZ firm looked at my profile, and the only person I know there is my ex boyfriend, well there ya go!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:I believe you have to have the advanced registration (that you pay for) to see actual names. With the basic registration that most people have, you can get a list of who's viewed your profile, but it is only the company name. If you further click on the company, it will sometimes lead to a name but not always. Kind of hard to explain, but if you go to your home page not your profile) and look on the right side of the page, it will say something like "In the past 30 days, XX people have viewed your profile and you have appeared in searches XX times."

I'm not the OP, but I haven't seen this feature for awhile. They took it off.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:I believe you have to have the advanced registration (that you pay for) to see actual names. With the basic registration that most people have, you can get a list of who's viewed your profile, but it is only the company name. If you further click on the company, it will sometimes lead to a name but not always. Kind of hard to explain, but if you go to your home page not your profile) and look on the right side of the page, it will say something like "In the past 30 days, XX people have viewed your profile and you have appeared in searches XX times."

I'm not the OP, but I haven't seen this feature for awhile. They took it off.

No, it's still there. I just checked mine, and it's where PP described it: on the right-hand side of your home page. Scroll down about halfway. You can also move that box up by grabbing the heading; a four-pointed arrow will appear and you can click and drag it further up or down the page as you like.

Frequently, you can deduce who looked at your profile by seeing who your shared connection is. That's the whole gist of a network: you connect to people your friends/colleagues are connected to.

[Anonymous]

what if you don't have profile but are just surfing around?