Oh No! My LinkedIn Profile is Missing!

Think it could never happen to you . . . your LinkedIn profile could never go missing?

Try Googling this phrase:

linkedin profile disappeared

I found nearly 500,000 results, for people whose profiles went missing, and suggestions for fixes.

Did you know that LinkedIn can shut down your account, at their discretion?

According to LinkedIn’s User Agreement:

“We may modify, replace, refuse access to, suspend or discontinue LinkedIn, partially or entirely, or change and modify prices prospectively for all or part of the Services for you or for all our Members in our sole discretion.

LinkedIn further reserves the right to withhold, remove or discard any content available as part of your account, with or without notice if deemed by LinkedIn to be contrary to this Agreement. For avoidance of doubt, LinkedIn has no obligation to store, maintain or provide you a copy of any content that you or other Members provide when using the Services.”

But, more likely, your account can be hacked. Mine was recently. Luckily I found out, notified LinkedIn, changed my password quickly, and stopped nefarious activity before it escalated.

We’re all at such risk.

What happens to our profile content, when it’s attacked by hackers, or LinkedIn shuts it down?

We probably can’t retrieve it. It’s gone for good. But with foresight, we can protect ourselves in advance.

Fortunately, LinkedIn makes creating a decent looking PDF version relatively easy. If your profile disappears, you can quickly copy and paste it back into a new account.

As you go through this exercise, be aware that given the ever-changing nature of LinkedIn, this feature may not continue to be available, or may not be available to you yet, or may function in a different way:

1. Hover over Profile in the navigation menu across the top of your profile and click Edit Profile.
2. In the name block, click Done Editing to reveal the blue “Complete your profile” button and Edit button next to it.
3. In the drop-down next to Edit, click on Export to PDF.
4. Save the file. Easy as that!

Saving your profile to PDF doesn’t include your LinkedIn contacts. You don’t want to lose track of all those people! Here’s the fix:

1. Click Connections in the navigation menu across the top of your profile.
2. Click the little cog icon to the far right of the Connections header at the top of the page, which reads Settings.
3. Under Advanced Settings (top of the righthand sidebar), click Export LinkedIn Connections.
4. Choose where to export it, in the drop-down under “Export to”, then click export.
5. Save the file in a location where you can easily find it, like the Desktop.

Now you have them in a spreadsheet, ready to import them into a new LinkedIn account, if need be.

For much more information: See my article on our sister site, Executive Career Brand, YIKES! My LinkedIn Profile is Gone!

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