LinkedIn Profile Photo and Banner: What Recruiters See

Your LinkedIn photo and banner are seen before your headline. In a results list, under a comment or in an invitation, a recruiter sees a face first, then a name, then one line of text. These two images do not move you up the ranking, but they decide whether anyone clicks.

What appears next to your name

Your profile is almost never seen in full. What travels is a card: photo, name, headline, location and current employer. That is the block a recruiter sees in LinkedIn Recruiter, the one a contact sees when your invitation arrives, and the one you see yourself at the top left of your feed.

Everything happens in a few square centimetres. The photo is a thumbnail-sized circle, the banner a barely visible strip. Both have to work small, which most people forget when they pick them on a large screen.

The profile photo

Size

LinkedIn recommends a square image of at least 400 × 400 pixels. It is displayed as a circle, so anything in the corners disappears. Upload a larger image if you have one and LinkedIn will scale it down; an image that is too small gets scaled up and blurred.

Framing

The most useful rule fits in one sentence: your face should fill about two thirds of the circle. A full-length shot, a holiday photo or a portrait in front of a landscape becomes, once shrunk, a tiny and unrecognisable figure.

• Frame from the shoulders to the top of your head.
• Look at the lens or just beside it.
• Choose a plain or blurred background that does not compete with your face.
• Use light from the front, never a window behind you.

Clothing and tone

Dress as you would for an interview in your field, not for a wedding. A developer in a suit against a studio backdrop looks as out of place as a lawyer in a T-shirt. The right benchmark is what people already doing the job you want actually wear.

The costliest mistakes

No photo at all. A grey circle reads as an abandoned profile, or a fake account. It is the most expensive mistake and the easiest to fix.

A crop from a group photo. It always shows: a stray shoulder, a party background, a resolution that is too low.

A logo instead of a face. It belongs on a company page, not a personal profile. A recruiter is looking for a person.

Filters and decorative frames. They add noise to a space that can take very little. The green #OpenToWork frame is the exception, covered in our article on the Open to Work badge.

The banner

Size

The banner is 1584 × 396 pixels, a 4:1 ratio. It is not displayed the same way everywhere: on desktop, your profile photo covers its lower left corner; on mobile, the edges are cropped.

So put what matters in the centre and on the right, and never put text in the left quarter.

What to put on it

The banner is the only image on your profile that can carry a message. Three approaches work:

1. A visual of your field, kept simple: a workbench, a building site, a blurred screen of code, a landscape linked to your sector.
2. A short positioning line that complements your headline without repeating it. For example Reliable financial data, delivered on time.
3. Proof: a publication, a recognised certification, the logo of a public project.

The approach that does not work is having none. The default grey banner is not a penalty in itself, but like a missing photo it signals a profile nobody maintains.

If you are not a designer

An online layout tool with a LinkedIn banner template is enough. Stick to two colours, one typeface and one sentence at most. Restraint looks more professional than a busy collage.

Consistency with the rest of the profile

The photo and banner replace nothing. They make people want to read a headline that carries your keywords and an About section that carries your evidence. A carefully designed banner above a Job title at Company headline creates a mismatch recruiters notice.

If you only do one thing after this article, replace a missing or distant photo with a tightly framed portrait. Then work on your LinkedIn headline: it is the line shown right underneath.

Check how it renders

Two checks are enough.

1. The thumbnail test. Open your profile on your phone and look at your photo in your list of sent invitations. If you do not recognise yourself instantly, re-crop.
2. The overlap test. On desktop, check that the photo does not hide any text on the banner, then check again on mobile.

For the rest of the profile, our LinkedIn profile analysis scores the headline, the About section and your experience, and tells you what to fix first. The photo and banner are not scored, because they are not in the profile's PDF export: they appear in a checklist instead, as our methodology explains.

FAQ

What size should a LinkedIn profile photo be?

LinkedIn recommends a square image of at least 400 × 400 pixels. It is then shown as a circle, often very small, so crop tightly on your face to keep it recognisable in a list of search results.

What size is a LinkedIn banner?

1584 × 396 pixels, a 4:1 ratio. Keep text and anything important in the centre and on the right: on the left, your profile photo covers part of the banner, and the mobile view crops the edges.

Is a LinkedIn profile without a photo penalised?

It is not removed from search, but it gets fewer clicks. In a results list, a grey circle next to a name reads as an abandoned profile, and a recruiter moves on to the next line.

Related articles: Optimise your LinkedIn profile for recruiters · What LinkedIn headline to use while job hunting