What kind of picture should you have in your profile?

Well that depends, is it for business or for personal use?  That may sound like a no brainer but many people use the same picture on their Linkedin account that they did on their Myspace account. As a general guide for a business profile picture:

1. No pets
2. No anime or comic book characters (No matter how cool)
3. No enigmatic shots of inanimate objects or strange locations
4. No group shots

The following YouTube video is not only very funny but illustrates many more picture types that you don’t want associated with your business. View it here.

So now that we have covered a few of the things that you shouldn’t do, lets look at some that you should do:

1. It should be only you in the picture
2. You should dress neatly and professionally – this doesn’t necessarily mean a suit and tie but wear clean clothes and run a comb through your hair!
3. Smile? It depends on gender actually. Women’s pictures are more effective when they smile but men’s are equally effective whether they smile or not.
4. Should you look toward or away from the camera? Studies have shown that women’s pictures are most effective if maintaining eye contact with the camera while men’s are more effective if they look away from camera

While doing a little research for this post I came across a website studying the effectiveness of various factors in dating profiles. It was an interesting read and you can check it out here.

Now I know many of you are going to point out that I didn’t take my own advice given the picture above. My only defense is that while I know what goes into taking a good picture it does not mean that photos taken of me are any good. Say cheese!