Does LinkedIn show who viewed your profile?

While job hunting online, wouldn’t you like to know who viewed your profile on LinkedIn? That would obviously be very valuable information, as you can see if your job applications are throwing up any interest with companies. If you’re a salesman, seeing who is viewing your LinkedIn profile can help you chase more leads. In this article, we look at how to see who viewed your LinkedIn profile and how to make yourself anonymous if you want to look at someone else’s profile.

Does LinkedIn show who viewed your profile?

Unlike other social networks, LinkedIn makes a point of showing you who has visited your profile. This is most likely down to the fact that the main purpose of LinkedIn is to advance your career and make business connections. Therefore, knowing who is expressing an interest in you is helpful information to have. You can follow up on those leads to close sales or introduce yourself to a prospective new employer. You can also get a discreet heads-up if your current boss is snooping around to see if you are making plans to jump ship anytime soon.

LinkedIn is obviously aware of how valuable this information is, so they don’t give away the entire candy store for free. The free LinkedIn account only gives you five profiles who are looking at you. If you want the full previous 90 days’ worth of data, you need to sign up for a paid Premium plan.

Regardless of whether you’re on the free or paid plan, you will never see data from profiles in private mode.

How to see who viewed your profile on LinkedIn

There are two ways to see who viewed your profile on LinkedIn. The first is to click Notifications at the top of the screen. If you scroll down the list, you will see who has been looking.

The second method is to look at the left-hand side of your news feed. There is a box there that has details about your profile. There’s a link there called Who’s viewed your profile.

Clicking that link will bring you to a page giving details about the viewers. But free LinkedIn users will only see five profiles. The others will be blurred. To unblur them, you need to get your wallet out and pay for the Premium plan.

How to view someone’s LinkedIn profile without them knowing

If you would prefer to view someone’s LinkedIn profile without them knowing, the only way is to first make your account anonymous. Unfortunately, there’s no one-click switch that jumps you from public to private and back again. So you have to do a few more clicks and jump through a couple more hoops.

You can do this by clicking Me at the top of the screen.  Select Settings & Privacy.

Under the Visibility tab and the Visibility of your profile & network sub-tab, click Profile viewing options.

You can now switch your account to private mode. There are two versions to choose from. One is Private profile characteristics, where most of your account is private. However, the other person can still see some details, such as your occupation and the industry you’re in.

Private mode, on the other hand, completely hides everything.

Once you’ve made your choice, saved it, and come back out, you can visit someone’s profile, where you will look like this.

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