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How come some people have a professional card when you hover over their name? Here is how to curate your Google profile and control its visibility.
Completing your picture
Completing your picture
When you look at anyone's contact details, a hovercard appears. Some data is controlled by your company (such as your office). Other data fields (such as your photo, pronouns, links) are yours to fill out, including determining who you display it to, if at all.
Editing your profile & pronouns (new!)
Editing your profile & pronouns (new!)
Start by going to aboutme.google.com.
Your profile photo. Please set one, or you will be stuck with initials and look like a deactivated account.
Pro tip: Change it from time to time! People notice, and you will too. Things like this make software feel like an extension of yourself. Your profile photo is always visible to others - it's even a security measure.Name, including nicknames.
Birthday. People who have you in their contacts will get a reminder in their calendar.
Pro tip: You can set your birthday without year.Gender, including custom ones.
Pronouns, including custom ones.
Your organization may limit which fields you can edit - big organizations typically won't allow you to change your name, for example.
Contact info. Pro tip: "Work email" is not the same as your Google work email. I would leave it blank unless you want your employer to know about your moonlighting.
Editing "about me" and work history
Editing "about me" and work history
People in large companies have a second set of fields: Once you're done with your basic info, you can click the "left" button and enter more information.
About me. This is the nicest section, in my opinion. It's also where the coveted links from the contact card come from.
Your work history. I'm not sure it's worth adding information here (nobody looks it up).
Who can see my data?
Who can see my data?
You have detailed control over the individual fields in your profile and can set whether only you see them (you could use this setting for drafting), people in your organization or anyone.
"Anyone" really means anyone with a Google account. It is possible to create public hovercards, and why not - I do it, that's why I go through the trouble of creating a profile in the first place. But people need Google products to hover over your name and bring up the card. Your profile picture is an exception and works regardless whether someone uses Google or not, as email programs tell each other where to look up a sender's picture.
Nerdy details: Data you can and cannot change
Nerdy details: Data you can and cannot change
Two data sources make up your Google profile:
The Google directory (which you can find under contacts.google.com) is your company's address book and contains your name, email address, work address, grade (ever so important) and sometimes your work phone. Some companies add more data, others less. Unless you're a tiny company, this data comes from your human resource system . If this were a quiz, a question would be "where can you usually change your phone number?" a) In "about me" b) In Workday.
Your Google profile. This is where it gets interesting. This is all you. You have officially taken ownership of this section!
Besides having an expressive profile picture, you will now also have a contact card that stands out by being professional. Hop over to aboutme.google.com and take charge now. All your questions about profile photos are answered in this post. Thank you for reading!
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#contactsPublished 2020-04-07 by Holger Matthies.Republished 2023-03-07 by Holger Matthies.Modified 2023-03-07 by Holger Matthies.
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