Want to look for a new job? It’s probably a good idea to increase the level of privacy on your profile. Need to promote your personal brand? You probably want your profile to be public.

You can adjust these settings depending on your needs. The good news is that you can update your settings to be as public or as stealthy as you like. That’s the bad news: most of LinkedIn is public by default. How to Make Parts of Your LinkedIn Profile Private If you’re actively searching for a new job, you will want to turn this off. LinkedIn has a default setting that notifies your LinkedIn connections (including coworkers and your boss) if you update your profile. In general, this means that you should be careful about what you update, when you update, and how you update on LinkedIn. This can be helpful from a “research” perspective, but it also means you should be careful what you post. In fact, LinkedIn recently updated their platform to make all status updates public, meaning that they’re picked up by search engines like Google. Information like your name, company, summary, and experience can be viewed by other LinkedIn users and the general public. Unless you have edited your settings, most of your LinkedIn profile is public. Check out this link to see who has been searching for your profile.

Here’s a tip: Pro Tip: LinkedIn also provides insight into the other side of the search experience. This essentially makes a “profile view” like a first point of contact with a person, so if you aren’t ready to engage with a potential customer, partner, or employer, don’t initiate contact this way. The first thing you should know is that LinkedIn will notify someone any time you look at their profile, if you are logged in and in a non-incognito window. With its emphasis on searchability, transparency, and public perception, LinkedIn is the ideal social network for would-be stalkers, from potential contacts to your current manager. In order to get a sense of the level of awareness you need on LinkedIn, let’s start by viewing LinkedIn from a curiosity perspective. But when it comes to professional “research,” I do have a few tips to make your networking, job search, or plans to exit a company more discreet.

Regardless of privacy settings, medium, or channel, I know I’m one screenshot away from any information becoming public. To be safe, I always assume the things I type online are public.

Linkedin profile search