Who's viewed your LinkedIn profile?

How to See Who's Viewed Your LinkedIn Profile & Why it Matters

Hannah Mason
Blog

How to See Who's Viewed Your LinkedIn Profile & Why it Matters

Hannah Mason • Nov 18, 2024

Can people see who viewed their LinkedIn profile? The answer is yes. LinkedIn will show you exactly who has discovered and viewed your LinkedIn page.

This information is very important to know and understand. This is especially true if you intend on using your LinkedIn profile to find a job.


Who viewed my LinkedIn profile?

The specific tool we're talking about is 'who viewed my profile'. It's full features are available as part of a 30-day free trial of LinkedIn Learning which you can access here.

Many people do not realise this LinkedIn tool exists, let alone how to use the insights it provides. If you're one of these people, you've missed out on a powerful LinkedIn tool. But don't worry, you're in the right place.

If you learn to use this tool, it can provide a big boost to your job search efforts. In fact it's an essential piece of the LinkedIn optimization process.

Disclosure: We are affiliates for some of these products and services, if you click and make a purchase, we earn a commission at no extra cost to you. Learn more.‍

Why do you need to see who viewed your LinkedIn profile?

Before we go any further, we need to answer this question.

The main reason people use LinkedIn is to increase their online visibility. LinkedIn is all about getting found online. But don't forget, you need to get found by the right people on LinkedIn!

This is why LinkedIn shows who's viewed your profile. Out of the 850M LinkedIn members, there is a small segment that can help you to grow your career. These are likely to be the recruiters that hire within your industry. Or the hiring managers, HR teams and decision makers in your target companies.

But if your LinkedIn profile is only viewed by a bunch of random people, it's no good to you.

Getting discovered on LinkedIn

You can harness LinkedIn's true potential when your profile attracts the right attention.

If your LinkedIn profile is not attracting the attention of the right people, you need to fix it. If you don't you are wasting your time on LinkedIn.

When you know who your LinkedIn profile is attracting, you can make adjustments. These informed adjustments will help you get found and hired.

To attract the right attention you'll need to optimize your LinkedIn profile.

When optimizing your LinkedIn profile I recommend using JobScan. Jobscan will scan your LinkedIn profile and the job descriptions of your target roles.

Jobscan will then tell you the exact keywords that you need to insert into your LinkedIn profile.

The end result is a LinkedIn profile that gets seen by the right people. You can create a free Jobscan profile here. (ad)

How to see who's viewed your LinkedIn profile

To access this feature from desktop, navigate to the left side of the home page and click on the 'Who Viewed Your Profile' link. You'll find it below your LinkedIn profile picture.

To access it on the mobile app, tap your profile picture, then 'view profile'. Now scroll down to the analytics section and locate the number of profile views that you've had. Click on this number to access the analytics.

Please note, if you haven't had any profile views in the last 90 days, this option will not be available to you.

How far back can you see who's viewed your LinkedIn profile?

The Who Viewed Your LinkedIn Profile feature shows you data from the past 90 days.

It also shows trends, plus further important insights about your viewers. We'll talk about why these are important later in this article.

What information will LinkedIn show you about your profile visits?

This depends on their privacy settings. There are three possibilities that you should be aware of:

Privacy settings open

If privacy settings are open you'll be able to see their name, headline, location, and industry. This is of course very helpful information.

In my experience as a recruiter, most LinkedIn members have their profile open. So you'll likely be able to see this information for most of your LinkedIn profile visitors.

Semi-private profile

If the profile is semi-private, you'll see limited information. This includes their job title, company, industry and place of education.

For example it might say VP of sales in manufacturing industry, or student at NYU, or someone who works at Heinz.

Private LinkedIn profile

If someone has their LinkedIn profile set to private mode you'll only see 'LinkedIn Member'.

We can optimise your LinkedIn profile

Learn more

Get your CV professionally edited and make sure YOU get noticed

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How will this help your job search?

This insight will do more than boost your chances of landing a job. Making sure that the right people find you on LinkedIn is important for growing your network. It will also help you to continue developing your career over the long term.

If you are a freelancer, a consultant or a business owner this insight is also invaluable.


Think of your LinkedIn profile visitors as potential customers

Imagine if you owned a clothing store. Anyone that walks through your door is a potential customer. You'll approach them and ask how what has interested them and how you can help. You wont ignore them.

This is how you should think about those who have viewed your LinkedIn profile. Don't ignore these visitors. Something about your LinkedIn profile interests them. Send a message, connect and begin a conversation.


Network with your LinkedIn visitors

Making a habit of networking in this way is a sure fire way of opening doors. Make particular effort to reach out to those in your industry. Don't forget to keep an eye out for recruiters or people in HR.


Imagine what you could achieve in 30 days

A free trial of LinkedIn Learning will give you access to this information for 30 whole days. That's an entire month to watch your profile views, optimise and network. In that time you could make some serious inroads!

This is one of the reasons I recommend all job seekers use their 30-day LinkedIn trial. You need to know who's looking at your profile and you need to reach out to them.

What if your LinkedIn profile isn't attracting the right people

When I say 'right people', I mean the kind of people you need to network with. Looking to find a job in a tech company? You'll want people in the technology industry to find you.

Optimising the content of your LinkedIn profile will impact the number and type of views you get. Certain keywords will cause you to appear in different searches.

It's essential that you pay close attention to the content of your LinkedIn profile. Your profile should aligned to the job roles you are targeting. Even small changes can have big impact.

Jobscan will allow you to scan your LinkedIn profile and target job descriptions. It will then give you a list of essential keywords and help you to place them into your content.

Jobscan is one of the tools that we recommend to job seekers.  Jobscan in tandem with LinkedIn Premium will give you a competitive edge in the job search market.


6 sections you should optimise on your LinkedIn profile

LinkedIn profile picture

Add an engaging profile picture to your LinkedIn profile if you want more views. It's a simple change that works wonders. LinkedIn claim that this change alone can get you 14x more profile views.

Learn more about LinkedIn profile pictures here.


Create a great LinkedIn banner image

Your LinkedIn banner image should tell visitors what's interesting about you. Communicate what you do, how you do it and why they need to connect with you.

Use Canva to create an eye-catching LinkedIn banner. Canva has loads of great templates to get you started.

Learn how to create a great LinkedIn banner here.


Optimise your headline

Your professional headline can help you two-fold. If it includes the right keywords it'll help you to show up in the right LinkedIn searches. If your headline is well written it will help grab the attention of visitors and tell them what they need to know.

It's very important to get this right. J

obscan is the perfect tool to help you optimise this section of your profile. Access Jobscan here. (ad)


Make your LinkedIn About section compelling

You can write a lot in this section so you need to get it right. Including the correct key words will help you to show up in the right LinkedIn searches. Treat your visitors to an interesting narrative about you. Tell them about your career journey, what makes you unique, and why they might want to know more.

Again, Jobscan is a great place to begin! (Ad)


Optimise your Experience section on LinkedIn

This is obvious, but many people don't make the most of their LinkedIn experience section. This section should highlight the most relevant experience for the roles you're targeting.

Consider the keywords recruiters will type into LinkedIn when searching for candidates. Upload 2-3 job descriptions of target roles into Jobscan. Jobscan will highlight your gaps and suggest keywords to add in.


List the most relevant skills on your LinkedIn profile

The Skills section of a LinkedIn profile is often misunderstood and neglected. Listing the correct skills is an essential part of key-wording your LinkedIn profile.

You should pin the most important and relevant skills at the top of the list.


Invest time into optimising your LinkedIn profile

Optimise your LinkedIn profile and track the results. You should see a quick uplift in the number of visits you receive. You should also see an uplift in the relevancy and quality of your visitors.

Don't give up on it too early. Take at least a month to refinie your LinkedIn profile. Use the who's viewed your profile tool to track the effects of your changes.


Should you upgrade to LinkedIn Premium to access this feature?

Whether paying for a subscription is worth the money is down to you. But there are lots of features that make a premium account a powerful job search tool.

With a LinkedIn Premium account you'll see who's visited your LinkedIn profile in the last 90 days. You will also see viewer trends and insights. A LinkedIn premium account will help you check the general trend of your visits over the months.

Get started with LinkedIn Learning/Premium here.


Conclusion

Knowing who's viewed your LinkedIn profile is essential knowledge. As a job seekers, business owner or networker you can't be without this information.

Start with a free 30-day trial of LinkedIn Learning to explore how this feature works. Continue to optimise during this free trial. The effects will amaze you!