This news is not for people who like to lie on their resume. LinkedIn is adding new ways to verify where you work and went to school, the company announced on Wednesday. The new verifications for members and companies come amid a torrent of AI-powered scams wreaking havoc on social media platforms and the job market. Generative AI makes it easier to create fake media or impersonate specific people, like recruiters or executives.

“With advancements in AI, pretending to be someone that you’re not is getting increasingly cheaper and easier,” Oscar Rodriguez, vice president of LinkedIn’s trust products, told me in an interview. “And with that, authenticity is becoming increasingly important, perhaps more important than it has ever been.” As of September, more than 115 million of LinkedIn’s billion members have added verifications to their profiles.

Individual LinkedIn members can verify their current workplace or university by getting two or more colleagues to vouch for them. You’ll need to have been connected to the person vouching for you for at least one year and have two-factor authentication enabled. You won’t be able to vouch for every single person you went to school with or in your office, but those limits are designed to ensure bad actors don’t take advantage of the tool.

Requests to verify your classmates and colleagues will appear under a new, separate section under My Network. LinkedIn says verified accounts see 50% more engagement on their posts and nearly 90% more profile views.

And if you’re a page admin for a company page on LinkedIn, you can now also remove people falsely claiming to work at your company from LinkedIn’s search results. This is less about cutting down on clout chasers than it is about weeding out scammers who may falsely claim to be a recruiter or executive with a company in order to glean money and personal information from job hunters. Job scams are a growing problem; in a March 2026 survey from the cybersecurity firm Norton, 33% of US respondents said they had encountered a fake recruiter, phishing attempt or fraudulent job posting. Those who fell victim almost always lost money, nearly $9,000 each on average.

How to use LinkedIn’s verification tools

Verification on LinkedIn is free, but it’s a little bit different than other social media platforms. In addition to claiming a person is who they say they are, these tools can also verify where someone goes to school and works.

1. Click the down arrow next to your profile picture in the upper-right menu. Click Settings & Privacy.
2. Click Verifications under Account.
3. Add verifications for your workplace, education and identity as prompted.

Once you do verify these things, people who view your LinkedIn profile will be prompted to view your verifications when their mouse hovers over your name. You’ll also get an icon that looks like a checkmark inside a shield next to your name. This is the badge you want to look for on company pages when you see a new job listing and get a message from someone claiming to be a recruiter.

For more info on LinkedIn’s verification tools, check out this help page. You can also read more about LinkedIn’s new AI slop button.

Katelyn Chedraoui

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Katelyn is a reporter with CNET covering artificial intelligence, including chatbots, image and video generators. Her work explores how new AI technology is infiltrating our lives, shaping the content we consume on social media and affecting the people behind the screens. She graduated from the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill with a degree in media and journalism. You can reach her at kchedraoui@cnet.com.

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