This Week’s Hilariously Bad, Fake, No Good, Terrible LinkedIn™ Profile
Have a quick look. I found nine red flags. See how many you can find.
A couple obvious red flags:
Luna’s Headline says she is the vice president. Her experience section says she is a manager. Oops.
Luna’s Headline says she is a VP of Sales, but her experience section talks about marketing, not sales.
Luna has no connections
Luna has no followers
Luna has no activity on LinkedIn™
An obvious sign of a badly made up profile is the word salad in her Experience section. It’s way too general, and the verb tenses don’t match properly.
She says she is based in New York, and went to school in Ottawa, Canada. Why is her banner photo a bunch of palm trees?
Perhaps a little less obvious:
She says she went to school at Carleton University. Note how her description of her time there reads less about her and more as an ad for Carleton.
She also goes downhill from “excellent academic performance” in one line to “good performance” in the very next line.
So let’s move on to her message to me. My reply follows, starting with the word “Seriously?”
She tried to explain her lack of followers, connections and activity were due to her “not being on LinkedIn™ that much.”
So I asked her how she had been with her current company since 2014 when a quick look at their Company page shows they were founded in 2021.
She did not respond, I reported the profile to LinkedIn™, LinkedIn™ erased her profile, and now the only evidence Luna ever existed is in this newsletter.
I used to be frustrated by all the pathetic fake profiles on LinkedIn™ . Now I just find them entertaining. Then I report them, and they go away.
This newsletter is a shorter version of my weekly email newsletter. I usually publish one of the articles from my email Newsletter on LinkedIn™. If you are interested in this deeper weekly dive into Using LinkedIn™ Effectively, here’s a link to the signup page: https://www.practicalsmm.com/free-email-newsletter/
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3moYou really have to watch out for Lunas .
Paralegal | Former Broadcaster and Pilot | Lifelong Learner
3moThe thing I don't understand about messages from such obvious fake profiles, Bruce, is they think they can dupe a generally intelligent, astute and discerning community with such blatant phoniness.
Purchasing Analyst at SNF Holding Company
3moThis is a difficult game to play. On one hand you want to educate the tech-challenged and make it more difficult for the scam. These type of connection requests are usually a confidence scam (romance-type scam) that usually ends in a fake bit-coin investment opportunity. However, you also run the risk of educating the scammer on how to improve by pointing out the red flags. In the end, these type of scams only end when Linkedin ends them or when they stop making money for the criminals. (probably never)
Communications Consultant | Certified State Health Insurance Assistance Program (SHIP) Counselor | Literacy Volunteer Tutor
3moUntil LinkedIn does a better job of policing this crap at the entry points, it will continue to be a joke. Ripe for takeover/replacement, just as Bluesky is now chipping away at shite-ified X/Twitter.
I don't use my job title very much, and I have been known to get it wrong. Especially in a bilingual environment where literal word-for-word translations can be misleading. In smaller and start-up companies people may also need to wear different hats, so just because they are in marketing this does not mean they're not also doing sales while maybe also doing a bit of accounting and a bit of HR on the side. So just because somebody is inconsistent, it doesn't mean they are fake. But yes, from the other clues, this one is obviously fake.