I review LinkedIn Profiles so that I know who are these people looking at my profile today, why do these people want to connect with me (if they send me a Naked LinkedIn Connection Requests) and how are these people connected with others or involved in  other areas of business that I also am involved in, or want to be involved in. This is one way to CRAM in LinkedIn.

You get to learn a lot about people and their businesses when you review their LinkedIn Profiles.

Here are a few examples of some of the mistakes I see people making on their LinkedIn Profile:

• Their name is entered in backwards.  Instead of Teddy Burriss, it’s Burriss Teddy. I see this often. I used to think they do not see the mistake, but with some of the profiles I see, I get the perception they just don’t care. This is really worse than the “Dumb LinkedIn Names” because at least those people were proudly saying, “I don’t care.”
• They enter their name in all lower case – to me this appears to be a total disrespect for their name and an indication that they don’t expect LinkedIn to be of much value – another big mistake
• Their Headline references a job that they left years ago. I recently saw a profile that said, “Caring Nanny” and their current position of 8 years is “Help Desk Manager”. They have marked the Nanny position as past, not as current.
• The chronological order of the past positions is overlapping, inaccurate and inconsistent. I understand that overlapping can occur, but in some cases the dates were so “whacked out”, it was clear to me that they imported their resume and then did not see the need or value in editing the content afterwards.
• Head shot – It’s ok to use a little creative prowess when you create a head shot, but pics of your grandkids, dogs or lake view do not offer your LinkedIn connections or future connections any value.
• Misspelled Company name, job title, or worst yet – your own name. I know typos happen, I do it often myself, but to misspell your Company’s name, or your own name is must plain lazy and a great way to tell those who look at your profile, “Yeah, just ignore me.”
• They have no link to their relevant Websites, or worst yet, they connect back to Dead sites.
• The Company name they selected is not a real LinkedIn company, which is not a problem unless there exists a LinkedIn profile for their company and everyone else in that company is connected to it already.

These are just a few of the big mistakes people make on their LinkedIn Profiles.  Share with me the mistakes you saw (thru a comment on my blog) and get entered in to win a cool prize if you submit the best one before July 1, 2012.