Fake profiles on Linkedin. Why? And who is behind this?

Maybe you found recently some invite from somebody who mentioned on his LinkedIn profile that it’s Talent Manager, Talent Hunter, Talent Specialist from companies like Google, Amazon, Skype etc. You accepted and nothing happened and you think that what is the reason, why I got this invitation?

Well, I can assure you, that “something happened” after you accepted this invite. 

I will try to disclose who is behind these profiles.

Me and two of my friends (both are also recruiters in Prague), we tried to find out who is behind it.

And because people behind these profiles are not responding on inmails, we tried small test to find out who is responsible for this.

Our small test:

- We created 3 email addresses on seznam.cz, only for the LinkedIn test. So we never used these emails anywhere else.

- We created 3 fake profiles of developers (freelancers, because we don’t want to use any real company) and we used these newly created emails. (These profiles were removed after the test)

- Than we connect each other and contact few people from agencies (sorry for that, but we need to have few people in our connection so others was 2nd connection for us). We only choose 4 from agencies, based on their number of connections and also we chose people from international brands so people are not going to share our email. Also every fake profile that we created has different people in the connections.

- We start visiting these fakes’ profiles of these “Talent Hunters/Managers” etc. from Google, Skype, Amazon and other companies. So they can see our profiles and they can send us invitation.

- During one day we got few invites from these profiles. Each fake profiles got and invite from all these 3 companies. So one profile accepted invite from Amazon, second one from Google and the last one from Skype. (Note: not from the real companies) But from "Google" we got absolutely most invites :)

- Within 24-48 hours every fake profile, that we created, got few job offers by email for freelancer job from CoolPeople on our newly created emails. Coincidence? Or they can predict newly created emails? I don’t think so :)

- We asked them, where they get these emails and the answer from their CEO (Milan Calek) was “From public source”. I am curious which “public source” has already own our emails, that we use only for LinkedIn and for this test only. :) 

- And that’s how we find out who is behind these fakes profiles on the LinkedIn. And not only in Czech Republic, but also in Germany and other countries where the CoolPeple are.

From their website “CoolPeople’s unique offer lies in the ability to deliver top IT experts from around the world as needed, flexible models of cooperation and very extensive portfolio of IT professionals. Most of these talents are not achievable by classical methods of recruiting of the end clients or recruitment agencies.”

Yes, the classical methods are buidling relationship with candidates and not hinding behind fake profiles. But classical method is taking so long and you need to be honest with the candidate. So that’s the reason why  “CoolPeople ’s unique offer  lies in the ability to deliver top IT experts from around the world as needed.”

Why should I / you care?

You can think, who cares about the fake profiles, if you get a good job offer and that is all the matters. And the people should also approve only LinkedIn profiles they know, so it’s their problem to accept these invites.

Well, the offers are not so great and the companies and recruiters in these companies care about this problem. If CoolPeople is approaching candidates as a Google and candidates contacting this profile for more info about job offers and if CoolPeople are not responding on these email and messages, they are building bad name/reputation for the Google and Google recruiters.

Also its looks really strange, that you sent a message to Google recruiter and he told you to contact CoolPeople representative and he will help you to get a job at Google. And this is applicable for the every company, not only for Google. Mostly the “recruiters” from CoolPeople they are hiding behind well-known brands as a Skype, Amazon etc. Because if you are going see great brand, there is high possibility that you accept the invite. 

Why the fake profile are problem:

- They are affecting the trust between the real companies and possible candidates

- They are lying and cheating the people with incorrect information

So why they create fake profiles?

- Its business, they try to get your email so they can send you job offer (mostly irrelevant), but still they can sell you to some company if you are interested. And its quick way, how to get your contact, without any other problems.

- They can sell the “live” email address to spam companies or for any other marketing purpose

How to find out if the profile is fake?

- Check the profile picture on Google http://www.google.com/insidesearch/features/images/searchbyimage.html or https://www.tineye.com/

- Check the profile if its full or its just empty profile without any information and recommendation

- Don’t accept invitation from people they look suspicious

One fake profile.

Real photo

Fake profile

Or another "real profile" :)

So how to stop this?

- Report the fake profiles to LinkedIn ( learn how to do that here http://help.linkedin.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1385/~/reporting-a-profile)

- Start asking CoolPeople representatives where they get you email and don’t trust them that it’s from “public source”.

- Share this article and warn others

- Most effective way is stop working with them (as a candidate and company)

More profiles on Linkedin (just small sample)

What will be next article? 

.... You will see and that "agency" will not like that at all. ;)

Update: 6/21/2014 - I found the Czech translation of this article http://objevit.cz/na-linkedinu-se-mnozi-falesne-profily-t79966