Are your LinkedIn followers recognizing you as a industry expert? Do numerous commenters applauding your advice on expanding your venture? Are headhunters reaching out to discuss opportunities?
If not, the reason could be that you're not male.
Dozens of women participated in an organized LinkedIn experiment recently following viral posts suggested that switching their gender to "man" enhanced their platform visibility.
Other testers rewrote their professional summaries to include what they termed "bro-coded" language - inserting results-driven professional jargon like "drive", "transform" and "accelerate". Based on reports, their visibility similarly increased.
The engagement increase has led some to speculate whether a built-in sexism in LinkedIn's algorithm favors men who employ online business jargon.
Similar to many large social media platforms, LinkedIn utilizes an algorithm to determine which posts are shown to which members - promoting some while suppressing others.
Through a company announcement, LinkedIn acknowledged the phenomenon but claimed it does not consider "personal characteristics" when deciding post visibility. Instead, the company mentioned that "hundreds of signals" influence how content are received.
Changing gender on your profile does not influence how your posts appears in search or feed.
A social media consultant, who modified her pronouns to "he/him" and her name to "Simon E", described extraordinary outcomes.
"The numbers I'm observing show a sixteen-fold rise in profile views and a thirteen-fold jump in content views," she noted.
Another professional, a marketing expert, began experimenting after noticing her audience decline substantially.
The outcome was immediate: a more than fourfold rise in reach within one week.
Despite the success, Cornish voiced dissatisfaction with the method.
"Before, my posts were more personal - brief and insightful, but also friendly and human," she explained. "Now, the bro-coded version was forceful and self-assured - like a white male being overly confident."
She abandoned the test after seven days, stating "Each day I persisted, and results improved, I became more frustrated."
Some participants experienced positive results. One writer who modified both her gender to "man" and her ethnicity to "white" described a decrease in reach and engagement.
"We know there's systemic preference, but it's very challenging to understand how it functions in particular situations or why," she remarked.
These experiments coincide with ongoing discussions about LinkedIn's unique position as both a business platform and community site.
Recent changes in recent months have reportedly resulted in female creators experiencing significantly reduced exposure, leading to unofficial tests where identical posts by men and women received vastly different audience engagement.
Per LinkedIn, the platform uses AI systems to classify and distribute content based on various elements, including post content and the member's career profile.
The company states it regularly evaluates its systems, including "checks for inequalities based on gender."
A spokesperson proposed that recent declines in some users' reach might originate from higher volume due to additional posts on the platform.
According to a tester observed, "masculine-oriented language" appears to be growing on the network.
"Users typically consider LinkedIn as more professional and polished," she remarked. "This is evolving. It's turning into increasingly competitive and unpredictable."
