In a recent post I made that talked about interviewing hacks, a friend pointed out that I left out an important point. He had beef with potential interviewees looking at his LinkedIn profile and he’d be creeped out by it. I thought it was obvious to use LinkedIn in private mode in order to stalk people, but apparently it isn’t.

So, in this article I’ll talk about how exactly you can stalk people on LinkedIn without them knowing.

Why Use LinkedIn Private Mode?

Your bottom line for using LinkedIn is to find a job.

• In order to find a job, your interviewer needs to like you.
• For your interviewer to like you, they must not be creeped out by you.

When you “stalk” interviewers on LinkedIn, they can react in 2 ways:

• They could be like me and don’t mind being stalked at all. Personally, I put my profile on LinkedIn so that people will look at my professional record. As such, I don’t mind if people look at my profile.
• They could be freaked out and feel that the candidate might be “too needy.”

Since you don’t know how your interviewer would react, you should opt to be more conservative and just make your stalking untraceable on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn Private Mode helps you do that. When your interviewer pops their phone open, instead of saying “John Doe looked at your profile,” it’ll just show up as “Anonymous User looked at your profile.”

In other words, LinkedIn Private Mode gives you plausible deniability in stalking. They’ll know someone looked at their LinkedIn profile, but it’s impossible for them to be 100% sure it’s you.

How To Stalk People On LinkedIn Without Being Creepy

Below are the steps to turn LinkedIn Private Mode on.

Step 1: First, login to LinkedIn.

Step 2: Then, go here: https://www.linkedin.com/psettings/

Step 3: Click Visibility on the left hand side.

Step 4: Then, under Visibility of your profile & network, tap Change on Profile viewing options.

Step 5: Finally. choose Anonymous Linkedin Member

And you’re done! Stalk away!

Note: Keep in mind that if you’re in private mode, you won’t be able to know if anyone else is stalking you either. This means as long as you’re in private mode, you won’t be able to see who viewed your profile (regardless of whether the person viewing your profile is in “public” or “private” mode).

If you’d like to stalk people privately and be able to see who viewed your profile, you can pay for LinkedIn Premium. Keep in mind that even with LinkedIn Premium, you’ll only be able to see “public” profiles that are stalking you (i.e. folks that didn’t turn LinkedIn Private Mode on) – “private” profiles will remain anonymous no matter what.

Why You Should Take 2 Minutes To Do This

I’m personally not creeped out by candidates looking at my profile – I’m quite flattered when they do, to be honest.

However, you should keep in mind that some interviewers would be creeped out.

You won’t impress your interviewer by having your name show up on their LinkedIn push notification. You’ll impress your interviewer by doing well in the interview and asking them poignant questions that’s based on their resume.

Thus, there’s nothing to gain by keeping private mode “off” with LinkedIn. So you might as well turn it on.

Going on the same vein, don’t take a look at your interviewer’s profile and then send them a message prior to the interview. This is quite annoying and you’ll position yourself as yet another LinkedIn spammer. It’s creepy and you’ll: 1) ruin the whole “private mode” anonymity thing, and 2) you’ve failed the interview before you got a chance to do it.

That said, if you’d like to write a brief thank you note on LinkedIn after your interview, go ahead.