Summary:

LinkedIn knows that Jim is a nickname for James, but it doesn’t know that Vin is a nickname for Vincent.  Therefore, when you search for someone, make sure you try both nicknames and formal full names.

Details:

My story, (which you can skip if you’re in a hurry):

A few years ago, I was searching for Vin Bono in LinkedIn, but couldn’t find him.  He was the CTO at the computer hosting company that housed our machines at a previous company, and he was also a friend of mine, so I wanted to be connected to him.  He wasn’t there, so I moved on.

A few months later, I tried again, but he wasn’t there.  I was surprised because he was just the combination of technical wizard, businessman, and social person that would know how to utilize LinkedIn.

Many months later, I tried again and he wasn’t there.  Then, I thought to try Vincent Bono, and found him.  In fact, he accidentally had two profiles, both using his full name.

I was surprised that the LinkedIn search engine didn’t know that Vin was an abbreviation for Vincent, since it did know that Chuck was short for Charles, and Jim was short for James.

The implications for you:

• If you are searching for someone using Search People in the upper right hand corner of your LinkedIn home page, and don’t find them using one name, try their nicknames, full names, et cetera
• Put your nickname and last name into a LinkedIn search, and see if your profile appears.  If it doesn’t, use the technique from my previous blog post at LinkedIn Tip – Misspell

Please pass this on to others with funky nicknames.  It would be a shame if you or one of your friends didn’t

• get a job
• find a friend
• make a deal

because you couldn’t find someone, or they couldn’t find you on LinkedIn because of this problem.

Good luck!

Here’s a 50 second video of me speaking about this at a corporate keynote.

LinkedIn expert tip about nicknames

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