How to take a great LinkedIn photo

Your photograph is your calling card, it’s a tool that puts a face to a name and a prospective employers first insight into you and your brand, which, as a salesperson in particular is super important.

Below, we have outlined our top tips on how to ensure your LinkedIn profile photograph reflects you in the best light possible:

1. Prioritise quality – the ideal size for your LinkedIn profile is between 400 (w) x 400 (h) pixels and 7680 (w) x 4320 (h) pixels. Larger file sizes are fine (although 8MB is the max) but try to avoid small, low resolution images. You don’t need a professional camera to take a high quality photograph, with tech nowadays, a phone as a high quality resolution camera.

2. Solo – this falls into two sides, firstly, don’t use group photos – it makes it unclear which person is you and can lead to confusion. If you want to show you are a team player and use a team photograph, we would suggest that you use that as your banner photo. On the other side, we have all been in a situation where we have taken a group photo and have loved how we have looked in it. LinkedIn is not the place to crop ourselves out of larger group photos. Cropping photographs can often make your face looked distorted.

3. Selfies – Whilst selfies are often easier to obtain, taken at a close distance, they can often distort facial features as front facing cameras on most phones take lower quality images than a rear camera. Ask a friend or colleague to take a photo of you, this can also be a benefit as they can give you guidance on how to tilt your head or which facial expressions looks best. Ensure your face takes up around 60% of the overall photograph – long distances don’t stand out. Crop the photo from the top of your shoulders to just about your head so that your face fills the frame.

4. Catfishing – we’ve all seen catfish. Although it sounds obvious, ensure your photo is recent, so it looks like you. This will ensure you are credible. Everyone ages, everyone has bad hair days, some of us grow to need glasses, but you want to ensure that if you walk into an interview tomorrow, a hiring manager knows exactly who they are looking for. Ditch the old photos and the filters.

5. Dress – job seekers are often worried about what they should wear in a LinkedIn profile as it cannot be changed depending on who you are meeting like you would be able to in an interview. Typically, you need to wear something like what you would wear to work on a day to day basis. If you wear jeans and a button down shirt most days, it’s ok to wear that outfit in a photo – likewise if you wear a suit. If you work from home most days, try wearing clothes that match the overall dressiness of your company as a whole and not your pyjamas!

For more tips on how to portray yourself in the best light to hiring managers, call our team on 01722 448 448