12 Shades of Grey

How to Bury Your Reputation While Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

Why every "hack" works against you, and the higher your position, the harder the fall

When a seasoned professional decides to "level up" their LinkedIn, they quickly stumble into a whole industry promising thousands of followers, engagement, and inbound leads. The problem: most of these tactics look like growth hacking when a junior marketer does them, and like desperation when a C-suite executive or a consulting firm partner does them.

Below is a full catalogue of grey-hat LinkedIn tactics. How they work, why they seem effective, and what they actually do to your credibility.

1. Fake accounts and bot armies

How it's done. Dozens of profiles are created with AI-generated headshots (This Person Does Not Exist and similar tools), fictional job titles, and fabricated work histories. These accounts mass-connect with the target audience, like and comment on the main profile's posts, creating an illusion of engagement. Some go further: fake profiles write recommendations for the main account, endorse skills, repost content.

Why it seems to work. LinkedIn's algorithm responds to early activity: the more likes and comments a post gets in the first hour, the wider its reach. On paper, the metrics go up.

Why it kills your credibility. Every professional community is two or three handshakes wide. Recruiters, prospective clients, and partners check the quality of connections, not the numbers. When a post about fintech M&A strategy attracts comments from "Maria, Digital Marketing Enthusiast" and "John, Aspiring Entrepreneur," it sends a clear signal: the author either doesn't notice the obvious, or orchestrated it themselves. For a senior professional, both options are catastrophic.

In the second half of 2024 alone, LinkedIn removed 80.6 million fake accounts at the registration stage. Over 2023, the platform blocked or removed more than 121 million fakes. Purges happen constantly, and the sudden disappearance of your "connections" after a sweep is visible to everyone. On top of that, AI-generated photos are getting easier to spot: telltale artifacts around the ears, mismatched earrings, a particular type of blurred background. Someone will notice. In a tight professional circle, that kind of embarrassment sticks around for years.

2. Pods: mutual like-and-comment groups

How it's done. A group of 20 to 100+ people agrees to like and comment on each other's posts within the first hour of publication. Coordination happens through Telegram chats, WhatsApp groups, or dedicated services (Podawaa, LinkBoost, and others). The former market leader, Lempod, was blocked and removed from the Chrome Web Store in 2025 for violating LinkedIn's terms, but alternatives keep popping up. Some pods are fully automated: you connect your account through a browser extension, and the system likes and drops template comments on your behalf.

Why it seems to work. Reach does go up. The algorithm sees a spike in activity and pushes the post to a wider audience. Someone in the pod might have 10,000+ followers, and their activity exposes your post to new people. The metrics look impressive.

Why it kills your credibility. This is the most common grey-hat scheme, which is exactly why it's the easiest to spot. The telltale signs: the same 15-30 people comment on every single one of your posts within the first hour. The comments are interchangeable: "Great insight!", "Thanks for sharing!", "Totally agree!" with zero relation to what the post actually says. The same people do the same thing on each other's posts. Anyone who's spent more than a year on LinkedIn recognises the pattern instantly.

For a senior professional, joining a pod is a public admission that organically, nobody cares about their content. It's the equivalent of a Fortune 500 CEO hiring a claque to applaud their keynote. On top of that, automated extensions require access to your account, which is a direct violation of LinkedIn's terms of service and can get you banned.

3. Mass connection requests

How it's done. Automation tools (Dux-Soup, Phantombuster, Linked Helper, Octopus CRM, and others) send hundreds of connection requests daily. Strategies range from "connect with everyone" to targeted scraping of competitors' audiences. The accompanying note is either missing or a template along the lines of "I came across your profile and was impressed by your background in [industry]."

Why it seems to work. More connections, more post reach, more people seeing your profile. LinkedIn displays "500+," and that looks respectable.

Why it kills your credibility. LinkedIn caps connection requests at 100-200 per week depending on your account type and Social Selling Index. Too many ignored requests trigger a warning, then a temporary restriction, and repeated violations can lead to a permanent ban.

But even if the account survives: a person with 15,000 connections, 14,500 of whom are random strangers, has a dead feed, an irrelevant network, and zero social proof. At the executive search level this matters: when a headhunter sees that a Managing Director candidate is connected to thousands of freelance marketers and self-help coaches, it raises questions about their professional judgement.

4. Automated messaging and InMail spam

How it's done. Automated sequences are set up through Dux-Soup, Expandi, Waalaxy, and similar tools: connection request → welcome message → follow-up in 3 days → another one in a week. Messages are "personalised" at the level of "Hi [Name]! I noticed you work at [Company]..." but the actual pitch is identical for everyone.

Why it seems to work. If you send 100+ messages a day, someone will reply. A 2-3% conversion rate at those volumes produces a few leads per week.

Why it kills your credibility. Recipients know the message is automated. LinkedIn isn't email: every message is tied to a real profile with a photo and a job title. When a managing partner of a consulting firm sends templated InMail, it reads not as "active business development" but as a sign of a weak position.

At the senior level, business comes through relationships and referrals, not cold outreach. Every templated message sent under your name makes it less likely the recipient will respond when you actually have a reason to reach out. You're burning future opportunities for today's 2% conversion.

5. Engagement bait and viral formats

How it's done. Posts are built not around substance but around maximising engagement. The classics: "Agree?" at the end. Long tearjerker stories with a "plot twist" (the "I was fired and now I run a $10M company" format). Hot takes like "MBA is dead" or "HR is broken." Every line is a separate paragraph with maximum white space to inflate dwell time. Polls with deliberately provocative options. "Comment YES and I'll send you my guide."

Why it seems to work. The reach is enormous. Posts ending with "Agree?" collect several times more comments than analytical pieces. LinkedIn's algorithm rewards all engagement, regardless of quality.

Why it kills your credibility. A senior professional's real audience isn't all of LinkedIn. It's 500 to 2,000 people: clients, potential partners, peers in the industry, board members. And these people react to engagement bait exactly the way any self-respecting professional would: they roll their eyes and hit unfollow.

You rack up 50,000 impressions from people who will never become your clients while losing the respect of those who could. A "rags to riches" post from a managing partner looks like a loss of bearings. The "Comment YES to receive my guide" format is lifted straight from bottom-tier infopreneurs, and your audience sees it.

6. Buying followers and endorsements

How it's done. Followers, skill endorsements, and recommendations are purchased through services like Fiverr, UseViral, and SidesMedia. Prices start at $5-10 per 100 followers or likes. More "premium" services promise "real" followers from your industry.

Why it seems to work. Follower count is the first thing a profile visitor sees. "5,000 followers" looks more solid than "200 followers." Skill endorsements create the appearance of community validation.

Why it kills your credibility. Follower quality can be checked in 30 seconds: just click on the list. If the followers of a CFO at an investment fund include accounts from Southeast Asia with empty profiles, the conclusion is obvious. Endorsements from people with no connection to your industry work as anti-recommendations: "Risk Management" endorsed by 47 people, none of whom work in finance.

LinkedIn regularly purges fakes, and a sudden drop from 5,000 to 400 followers is public humiliation in real time for anyone watching your profile.

7. Ghost-writing factories and unedited AI content

How it's done. Content is ordered from freelancers or agencies. The alternative: posts are generated through ChatGPT and published without meaningful editing. Some use automated posting services that generate and publish content on a schedule.

Why it seems to work. Posting frequency is one of the algorithm's signals. Delegation saves time. If the ghost-writer is good, the content looks professional.

Why it kills your credibility. The problem isn't ghost-writing per se. Presidents, CEOs, and politicians have always used speechwriters. The problem is when it's obvious. Unedited AI content is recognised instantly by its signature patterns: "In today's rapidly evolving landscape...," lists of exactly five items, no personal experience or specific detail, a perfectly balanced structure that doesn't occur in natural speech.

Factory ghost-writing is spotted differently: it's too generic, missing the kind of insight that only someone with 25 years of experience in a specific niche can offer. When an executive search partner publishes a post that any marketing intern could have written, it devalues their expert standing.

8. Fabricated case studies and inflated results

How it's done. Posts are published with exaggerated or entirely invented outcomes: "Helped a client increase revenue by 400%," "Closed 15 C-level placements in one quarter," "Our approach delivers..." with numbers pulled from thin air. Screenshots of conversations, testimonials, results: sometimes real, sometimes doctored, sometimes completely fabricated.

Why it seems to work. People trust numbers and specifics. A post about "400% growth" gets more saves and comments than one about how you helped a client restructure their hiring process.

Why it kills your credibility. In professional communities, clients know each other. Senior-level candidates talk among themselves. Headhunters exchange information. If your "case study" can't be confirmed by a single real person, that's grounds for a total loss of trust. One exposed fake case study wipes out ten real ones.

In executive search, inflating results is professional suicide. The industry runs on trust and referrals, and a single exposed exaggeration means the end of a client relationship and serious damage through word of mouth.

9. Comment-jacking: leeching off other people's posts

How it's done. Instead of creating original content, the bet is placed on commenting under popular posts. The strategy: monitor publications from thought leaders and drop long self-promotional comments in the first minutes after posting. Some use notifications and automation to be the "first commenter." Another variant: provocative disagreements to spark a discussion and gain visibility.

Why it seems to work. A comment under a post with 100,000 views reaches a massive audience. A provocative or contrarian comment collects likes and lands in "top comments." Visibility with no effort.

Why it kills your credibility. Systematic comment-jacking is visible to anyone who glances at your activity feed. A profile where 90% of the activity is comments under other people's posts looks like a profile of someone with nothing original to say. Deliberate provocations for visibility create the image of a troublemaker, not an expert. At the Managing Partner level, you're expected to set the agenda, not freeload off someone else's.

10. Fake recommendations and reciprocal endorsement rings

How it's done. An arrangement with colleagues, acquaintances, or members of the same networking groups: "I'll write you a recommendation, you write one for me." Sometimes recommendations are written by the recipient and sent to the "recommender" for posting. In extreme cases, recommendations are purchased on freelance marketplaces.

Why it seems to work. Recommendations are one of the most powerful elements of a LinkedIn profile. Prospective clients and employers do read them. Five detailed recommendations are more convincing than zero.

Why it kills your credibility. Reciprocal endorsement is transparent: if A recommends B, B recommends A, and both were posted on the same day, the conclusion is obvious. Recommendations from people who clearly never worked with you (different industry, different geography, no shared projects) aren't social proof, they're a red flag. Purchased recommendations are spotted by their style: too polished, too generic, missing the specific details that only a real colleague or client would know.

11. Sales Navigator as a spam platform

How it's done. Sales Navigator is used not for research and relationship-building but as a pipeline for mass InMail. The formula: filter by job title → export → automated outreach. Some add lead scoring and segmentation, but the core is the same: cold outreach at scale.

Why it seems to work. InMail has a higher open rate than regular messages. Sales Navigator's filters allow precise targeting. At volumes of 200+ InMails per month, the conversion produces some results.

Why it kills your credibility. InMail spam from someone with a Premium account is perceived even worse than regular spam: you've paid for the privilege of annoying people. At the C-suite level, recipients know exactly how Sales Navigator works and read mass outreach as a sign that the sender couldn't build relationships organically. For an executive search consultant, this is particularly damaging: your business is built on network quality, and cold InMail spam signals that the network isn't there.

12. Carousels and PDF clickbait with hollow content

How it's done. Visually polished PDF carousels are created in Canva: "10 Lessons I Learned...," "The Complete Guide to...," "What Nobody Tells You About..." The content is a collection of truisms and platitudes wrapped in nice design. The goal: maximise saves and shares.

Why it seems to work. Carousels get high dwell time (people swipe through the slides), and LinkedIn rewards the format with wider distribution. Saves are one of the heaviest signals for the algorithm.

Why it kills your credibility. A "7 Things Every Leader Should Know" carousel from an executive search partner with 25 years of experience is influencer-grade content, not expert-grade. Your audience expects depth, specificity, insider knowledge. When they get platitudes in a glossy wrapper instead, they recalibrate their assessment of your expertise. Not just downward, but sharply downward. Because if someone with that track record considers "Always hire for culture fit" an original insight, maybe the track record isn't as deep as advertised.

The bottom line

Every tactic listed above does the same thing: it optimises metrics that don't matter at the expense of an asset that does. Your 50,000 impressions are worthless if the three people who could have given you a CEO search mandate have decided you're not serious.

Professional standing isn't a number. It's the sum of micro-impressions that take years to build and one bad call to destroy. LinkedIn is not Instagram, where the audience is anonymous and replaceable. Here, your audience is made up of people you'll cross paths with for the next 20 years.

The only strategy that works is boring and slow: share what only you know, be useful to specific people, build relationships the way you'd build them at an industry conference, one person at a time. There are no shortcuts here. And every attempt to cut corners ends the same way: the people you were trying to impress stop taking you seriously.