Forgive my skepticism but I don't see the "Who's Viewed Your Profile" feature on LinkedIn as an opportunity to return the stalk, make a new connection and possibly land a new gig. But this guy seems to be convinced that's exactly what you can do:
If you look at the right side of your LinkedIn profile, you'll see an intriguing text box: Who's Viewed Your Profile, the networking equivalent of catching someone checking you out on the subway. And if you know how to use the feature right, it can land you business or a job.
When LinkedIn decided it was time to update their Who's Viewed Your Profile, Udi Milo, the product lead on the redesign, was faced with a riddle: how could he help LinkedIn's 277 million users make valuable connections happen?
The task required making casual users–who see the feature as a way of keeping score–act more like power users and use the feature to advance their work. For instance, some of the most fearsome of power users saw Who's Viewed Your Profile as a way to drum up sales leads–if they caught you looking at their info, they'd make an inquiry.
"What we saw in common was that viewing somebody's profile was like knocking on somebody's door," Milo says. "You view me, I view you, and then we have some common ground to talk about."
There is a reason some people prefer to browse profiles anonymously. That reason is mostly because no one wants to be called out as a stalker. "Hey, I saw you looking at my profile, does that mean you want to give me a job?"
In my case: no. It never means that. It means someone is checking me out. It probably means that for you, too. Unless the person stalking you is a recruiter, in which case they might try to get an in and harass you endlessly until you start answering their InMails.
Have any of you actually landed a good gig through LinkedIn stalking? I'd like to hear from you, get in touch.
