HELP: Linkedin removed my profile! [well, not mine, really]

What gives? A colleague of mine ran into my office and asked me to check Linkedin to see if I could find his profile. We are connected so, sure, I checked my connections. Since I am known to make a spelling error or two, specially with names, I was not convinced that something was wrong when I did not find him in my connections list.



So I used Google, who loves LinkedIn profiles, to see if I got his name correct: I did.







As a matter of fact, Google nicely cached his profile page on LinkedIn. CCIE # et all. So for sure he nor me is not nuts and he did have a LinkedIn profile and we are connected. Something must be wrong with my seach on LinkedIn, right?

Let's copy & paste that name, and CCIE serial, and repeat the search.


No matter what we tried, all we found was this "Dell sales dude" but never the hardcore network'er that stood behind me, I had linked to, and Google had cached.






So I tried some Google-fu to see if more people had their profile removed by LinkedIn, but all I found was people who asked for them selfs to be removed and happy faces that LinkedIn finally let's you remove links to people you once linked to. Silently, to make sure you piss nobody off :P

This is an interesting issue however.

I always check peoples LinkedIn profiles when I do job interviews or have business meetings planned with people I do not know. It often helps to make sure you use the correct wording [or metaphor's when clueless] when you know a little bit about their [public] background. I know many future employers do the same [Hi guys! I see you browse my profile before you call :D].

But what happens if you can't find that potential new employee on LinkedIn and you know nothing about her|him? Will it influence your initial selection on who to talk to and who not? I am sure it does for lots of companies. Never mind how smart that is, but it is done.

So what do you do when you drop of the most valuable professional showroom of the net? How does one prevent that from happening and having a too big an impact on your money making abilities?