The LinkedIn photo that reads strongest to recruiters.

A LinkedIn photo audit is an AI analysis that scores your existing professional headshots and reads them for the signals recruiters, investors, and prospects take from a face at a glance: competence, trustworthiness, and gravitas. The RealSmile Professional Audit covers up to 10 LinkedIn, About-page, or sales-deck photos on 17 metrics, identifies your best primary, lists which to demote, and ships a 5-page PDF with lighting, pose, wardrobe, and backdrop fixes in 2 minutes.

To improve your LinkedIn headshot, follow 5 rules: 1) Shoot at pupil height (no upward phone tilt that adds a double chin). 2) Use 45-degree window light with neutral fill on the shadow side. 3) Hold a closed-mouth confident expression with eye direction toward camera. 4) Wear a solid mid-tone color against a neutral wall (no logos, no patterns). 5) Frame head-and-shoulders, top of head at 5 percent below the top of the crop. The Pro Audit ties its top fixes to your weakest measured readings and supplies a photographer brief.

Yes. Hamermesh and Biddle 1994 (American Economic Review) found that, holding demographic and labor-market characteristics constant, plain-looking workers earn 5 to 10 percent less than average-looking workers, a penalty slightly larger than the premium for good looks. Willis and Todorov 2006 (PMID 16866745) showed that competence and trustworthiness judgments made after a 100-millisecond look at a face correlate highly with judgments made with no time limit. One closed deal, one recruiter pass, or one investor intro is worth far more than a $49 audit and a reshoot.

The Professional Audit includes up to 10 LinkedIn, About-page, or sales-deck headshots scored on 17 facial metrics. The Face Score and metric readings for each photo are read in words for competence and trust: how a recruiter, investor, or prospect is likely to see it. The 5-page PDF identifies your best primary photo, the photos to demote, exact lighting and pose fixes, and a hairstyle and grooming guide for your face shape. Delivered in 2 minutes.

The RealSmile Professional Audit is $49 one-time. For comparison: in-person executive headshots run $300 to $800 per session, executive-presence coaching runs $200 to $500 per hour, and rebooking a missed recruiter pass costs an entire interview cycle. $49 buys the diagnosis of which existing photo is strongest and exactly how to upgrade it before any photographer is booked.

A photographer shoots new images and charges $300 to $800 per session. The Professional Audit reads the photos already on your LinkedIn, ranks them, and tells you which keeper to promote, which to remove, and exactly what to change before booking any reshoot. If your strongest existing photo already reads well, the audit says so, and you may not need a shoot at all. If a reshoot does happen, the audit supplies written reshoot directions (framing, light direction, camera height, expression) so the photographer hits the metrics flagged, not 50 frames of guesswork.

Yes. Willis and Todorov 2006 (PMID 16866745, Psychological Science) found that competence and trustworthiness judgments made after a 100-millisecond look at a face correlate highly with judgments made with no time limit; a longer look mainly adds confidence. On LinkedIn your photo sits beside your name in search results and messages, so it is often seen at a glance. The Pro audit reads your headshots against that fast-glance judgment, in words: which photo reads most competent and trustworthy, and which visible cues (expression, eye contact, framing, light) are costing you, rather than the warmth that rewards dating photos.

Same scoring engine and the same per-photo readings; the difference is the brief and the price tier. The Dating Audit ($19.99) reads your photos for what swipes reward: warmth, attractiveness, and approachability. The Professional Audit ($49) reads the same readings for what recruiters, investors, and prospects scan for: competence, trustworthiness, and gravitas. Different recommendations, and a B2B photographer brief instead of a dating one.

Scoring runs in 30 seconds. The full 5-page personalized report is ready within 1 to 2 minutes of upload, and the link is emailed to you; the report page has a Download PDF button. No queue, no scheduling, no human review delay.

The engine measures the same landmark ratios on every face. Most metric scores are calibrated against the people who have scanned on RealSmile, while the Face Score percentile is counted against a benchmark of posed studio portraits of a mostly young, mostly East Asian cohort. How far readings move between photos of the same face is published on the Face Score validation page, and any reading the engine cannot measure on a given photo is left out of your report rather than scored.

No. Photos are processed in the scoring pipeline, the report is generated, and the source images are deleted from disk immediately after delivery. Nothing is retained, indexed, or used as training data. Only the resulting metric scores stay against your account so you can re-open the PDF.