“LinkedIn slipped in a new look on the world, at least for some (read more on the story below). This is the new LinkedIn Profile Header area as on May 17, 2012. It doesn’t really add anything NEW per se, it just uses the Apple look to make things that were already there a bit more intuitive.” Writes my friend and LinkedIn Diva Lori Ruff on the Integrated Alliances site today.

Where have my LinkedIn Recommendations gone?

Your actual LinkedIn recommendations haven’t gone anywhere. They are still where they should be. But the statement “Recommendations: 19 people have recommended Petra” will no longer proudly display in my LinkedIn Header area once my profile displays the new look.

What’s different between the LinkedIn Profile ‘Old Look’ and ‘New Look’?

Check out the pictures below and see how many differences you can spot. Then read on. Did you spot all the differences I did? Did I miss any? If so, please DO comment to let me and all other readers know!

• Past has been renamed previous; I personally think that is a good thing.
• The profile picture is shown bigger. This results in shorter lines with the professional headline. Not too happy about that. It makes it look more like a full paragraph, instead of a statement, which increases the chance that people won’t read it.
• Also, beware of the bigger picture… if you uploaded a small picture you will get a grey frame around your picture (compare the new look Lori to the new look Mike).
• The three items listed behind ‘current’, ‘previous’ and ‘education’ are no longer listed each on a new line, but shown one after the other. This is less clear. It even looks like only one item is now listed under education.
• The number of recommendations you received on LinkedIn are no longer shown in the top area. I wonder if search results can still be sorted by number of recommendations.
• The Twitter follow buttons have gone, websites are listed less obvious and the options to ‘share’, ‘PDF’ or ‘print’ have disappeared altogether.
• Your number of connections is shown more prominently, area has moved down, industry disappeared and the switch between multiple language profiles has moved from the top right of your profile to the bottom left of this header box. Not a bad move actually, people might even spot it here.

Wow, a lot of changes. Makes most instructions obsolete and what about screenshots? I’d quickly work through all episodes of the “LinkedIn Profile from Top to Toe” articles  if I were you. As soon as you’ve got “The new look” they won’t be as straight forward to follow anymore!

>>>What do you think of the changes? How will they impact how you use LinkedIn and how people are able to find you? Please share your thoughts in the comments.<<<

 

PS

And as soon as the news is out, the interface is gone! I kid you not. This is usual practice with LinkedIn though. They roll things out in batches. Test the responses. Sometimes they keep rolling out, sometimes the won’t. Other times they undo the changes, work on it some more and then roll it out; we’ll see what happens…