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Your profile picture is the first impression you make - before they read your email's subject line, before you turn on your camera, your picture will already have said more than a thousand words. It is up to you to make it work to your advantage and in many cases, make it work at all. Here is how.
Where it shows up
Where it shows up
Profile pictures are tied to your Google identity and are used everywhere at PwC. Almost all services either display them next to your name. The ones that don't display them in a hovercard next to your name.
Like your name, your profile picture is public. When you write an email, the URL to your profile picture is included (all email programs do that), so your recipient knows who you are. This is a security feature, making emails are harder to spoof.
The 3 sins of profile pictures
The 3 sins of profile pictures
Having no profile picture at all. Nothing says "Does not care about appearances" more than just the letter.
Having an outdated profile picture. If you have put on a bit of weight, facial hair or both - that is okay. But take a nice, new profile picture and let the first reaction be "hi!" instead of "oh!".
Being invisible in profile pictures. Google's profile pictures are very small, so make sure your profile picture is just your head.
How to set your new profile picture
How to set your new profile picture
Now that we agree it's important to your personal brand to not be the only person without a profile picture (or with one from 5 years ago), let's get to business.
The first thing is to have a good profile picture. It should be square and fairly large - Google will let you crop it, but be aware.
Start by clicking your existing profile picture (or the place where it should be - see on the right) in any Google Workspace service.
Click the camera icon.
In the next dialogue, upload a picture from your hard drive. There is a tab called "your photos", but that is a remnant from Google+ and not really functional. It seems to serve as a repository for pictures you have posted to Currents.
Finally, use the cropping tool to really zoom in on your face. It might feel odd, but look at how small people's images become in Gmail and Chat. If you leave space around you, your face will become just a tiny dot.
Pro tip: Opening people's full profile pictures
Pro tip: Opening people's full profile pictures
Sometimes, it is important to see people's faces. Before meeting someone for the first time, for example, or if someone was on a Meet, said something and afterwards you want to connect a name to a face. There is a way to enlarge profile pictures. One way is to look the person up either in Google Contacts or Google Currents. Both have bigger profile pictures. If you want to see an even bigger picture, you can do this:
Right-click any profile picture you see and select open in new tab.
The profile URL will have a number in it, such as Q=s40, perhaps with some trailing characters. Perhaps the number is different. Like so: Q=s70-p-k-ro-nx. This is means Google is resizing the image to 40x40, or 70x70 pixels.
Change that part to Q=s1000 to get a 1000x1000 pixels, or the maximum available size.
Super pro tip: Chrome will save this picture as "webp", but it is usually a JPG and you can rename it. This method is a practical way of resizing anyone's picture for presentations, including your own.
If you want to try it: My profile picture's URL is https://lh3.googleusercontent.com/a-/AOh14GhZOnkkTwrbSzbXDt8mlEkBdJ5Y_gFo3rLF0wwYwQ=s40
Finally, why not change your profile picture once or twice a year. People will notice and talk to you about it. Picking something with a different background color is nice, and most people will never see a big version of your picture - it does not have to be the one from your CV. Fresh, friendly and professional wins over stale any day. Thank you for reading!
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