I want to share a funny occurrence that has happened to me 4 times over the last few weeks that has made me smile, and may well have happened to you as well! 

When someone likens you to someone else - do you laugh, smile or cry? (I guess that depends on who it is I guess!) Anyway, you know the conversation ….. "you look just like xxxx off the TV…"  

Well the photo above will give you the clue of my amusement, and to add to this little story - three of the four people mentioning this to me have been clients!

Obviously this is amusing and it is certainly no problem being likened to Heston Blumenthal - I now just need to polish up my culinary skills a little to do the likeness justice!

But what happens when this goes to the next level. What happens when someone actually uses your photograph as theirs….. on LinkedIn… and is even in the same industry?

Well this happened recently to my friend Sarah White over in the US. Sarah is a well known and public figure in the recruitment and staffing industry (so many people actually know her and what she looks like), and is therefore well connected to fellow industry professionals.

This is what one of here friends sent here as a screen grab from their LinkedIn mobile app recently:

However, this is Sarah's profile

Naughty, naughty 'Linda'…..

Thinking it was a Linkedin bug, Sarah then checked LinkedIn….. and found that 'Linda Anderson' was in fact using her photo. So, Sarah contacted LinkedIn and posted this image on her Facebook page. Some of her friends were actually connected to 'Linda" so InMailed and contacted 'her' about 'she' had done.

The result was that 'Linda Anderson' eventually replaced Sarah's image with one from a stock photo site and went back to being whatever 'she' is.

Crisis averted - Sarah can resume being herself again!

Things ended well for Sarah <phew>, but there are some strange trolls out there on the social channels, who do some strange things!

So as I said at the beginning of this post - being recognised as someone else can be fun (and of course for me it was), but it can also have bad consequences for others.

So have you been likened to someone else? Are you brave enough to share it below in the comments?

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