TJ Walker and Tim Hughes discuss why LinkedIn's common-name problem makes it hard to find people and verify accounts. If your name is John Smith, you might need your full legal name or a nickname to stand out. LinkedIn's verification system asks for your passport name, which doesn't always match what you actually go by.
Questions this video answers
October 4, 2024.
The name that's on your passport (government ID).
Chapters
He tells a story about, he did a lot of work with Snapchat and he, you know, he came, I'm going all in on Snapchat. And then 18 months later he dropped Snatch Snapchat and he said, well yeah, okay, so I did Snapchat for 18 months. But in those 18 months I learned a lot about video, how to create short form video videos that people will watch. So he said that it's not that I, I wasted my time by doing stuff on Snapchat. I still came away with learnings that I've then taken on to new things.
Yeah, well said. Tim Hughes, thank you for being our guest today. If you want more Tim Hughes, check him out on LinkedIn. Now what do you do? It does raise a. What do you do when you have a relatively common name? No offense against us, Tims, Is it harder for people to find you on LinkedIn? If you meet someone at a marketing event, a convention or a conference, I assume you're not giving out business cards. What do you do with people who have common names? Because I've had people say, oh, I can't, I can't Even find a TJ Walker on LinkedIn sometimes there's so many.
I've never been asked that before. Well, I, I'm, I've tried to set myself apart by having my name as Timothy Tim Hugh. So I'm picking up people that are searching on Timothy, which is my, which is what my mum, only my mum calls me and, and you know, and.
I apologize sometime I will let you go today. But I was going to do the whole verification thing on LinkedIn and I started it and it says you, you have to have a government ID verifying the name you have on your account. Well, my name, I go professionally by TJ Walker. Well, my full name is Timothy John Walker. I couldn't figure out what to do at that point so I gave up. What do they do wrong?
So to have a, they keep nagging me about verifying my name. It's that what they want is you have to have the name that's on your passport. And so my name on my passport is Timothy Hughes but I don't want to use that on LinkedIn.
Yeah, that's what, that's what I faced. So did you get around that or what happened? So you're not verified and that's not a problem?
No, you know, it's, it's. No, one of the things is that they don't, LinkedIn don't like people changing. So, so there's one in there's one person that basically had a rainbow between their name. So LinkedIn basically said, you got, you've got to take the rainbow away. So they changed their name by deep pole. So their name is first name Rainbow, second name. So they then went back to LinkedIn and said, no, my name has is Rainbow. So they actually changed their name to the. And it's, it's LinkedIn's trying to, you know, they don't like the fact that I've got. Well, they don't like the fact that I've got Chinese characters after the. After the name. Yeah, what they want is the name that's on your passport.
Yeah, they're. They also seem really weird about middle names. If I plug in someone's middle name, it seems like, it seems like I broke the whole system and I don't know if I'm doing something wrong. But what happens when you plug in someone's middle name? I just find it goes completely Chloe on LinkedIn when I'm doing a search.
Yeah. Because I think what it's, it's trying to do, is it. It. If you take Elizabeth, it will be trying to, you know, it could be Betty Walker or, or Liz Walker or Beth Walker or. And so, you know, there's Robert and Bob and stuff like that. So I think what he's trying to do is it's, it's kind of from a computer perspective, it's kind of going into that loop and immediately it takes a, you know, couple of seconds to.
Actually, it is a little tricky. Tim Hughes, thank you so much.
You're welcome.
Insights. We very much appreciate your time. Thanks so much. Take care.
