In the 21st century, your Linkedin profile picture is your professional avatar, so it makes sense that most of us obsess over the tiniest details. One of the most common questions Snappr profile photographers get asked is "should I smile for my Linkedin profile picture?" We know that the answer is yes, but how many people heed that advice? We trawled over tens of thousands of results from Snappr's popular LinkedIn Photo Analyzer to find out.
Here are the TL;DR highlights:
People who have more connections tend to smile more. Disney is the smiliest company, while Verizon is the least happy company. Recent-hires smile more than the old guard. Americans and Australians smile the most, while Romanians, Poles, and Czechs smile the least.
Linkedin Smile Score by Country
Perhaps not surprisingly, America, with its penchant for extroversion, is home to the smiliest members of LinkedIn. Residents of former Eastern Bloc countries (Romania, the Czech Republic, and Poland) have the lowest smile scores, as do residents of developing nations like India, Venezuela, and Colombia.
Linkedin Smile Score by Industry
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While smiliness varied by nationality more than by industry, there were clear trends to see. Workers in people-oriented fields like recruiting, healthcare, HR, and hospitality were more likely to smile than workers in technical fields like computing, manufacturing, and logistics.
Linkedin Smile Score by Role
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Salespeople smiled more than average, whereas founders and engineers smiled somewhat less than average.
Linkedin Smile Score by Company
[Note: 1 inline chart image from Google-hosted CDN (lh5.googleusercontent.com) was removed during migration as it is no longer accessible.]
It's fitting that people who work at the Happiest Place on Earth are also the Smiliest denizens of LinkedIn. Verizon and Cisco sit at the other end of the spectrum.
Linkedin Smile Score by Network Size
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Indeed, there's a positive correlation between smile score and number of LinkedIn connections. Nearly 10 points separate the smile scores of very well-connected people from the people with the fewest connections.
Linkedin Smile Score by Seniority
[Note: 1 inline chart image from Google-hosted CDN (lh4.googleusercontent.com) was removed during migration as it is no longer accessible.]
There's a clear relationship between seniority and tendency to smile. Recent-hires are fresh-faced and eager, aggressively projecting a can-do attitude out on the world. More senior employees are secure, confident, they let their work rather than their profile pictures speak for them.
So who are the smiliest people on LinkedIn? The data points to people from America, Australia, and Israel, and professionals in people-facing roles like sales, recruiting, and hospitality.
