To play devils advocate, Linkedin is professional profile site. Personally I would not put a photo of myself holding a drink for this reason and agree or not, its reasonable to expect people wont like this. If someone said the same cause they saw a Facebook picture of you holding a beer then I would be in absolute agreement.

On a whim, I recently updated my LinkedIn picture to a photo of myself in a multi-coloured clown wig. This put an immediate end to all messages from recruiters.

just wait until the circus recruiters get a whiff of your profile

Don't worry, they will come back

They only grep the CVs for words, if you put you're a lion tamer, archeologist, but has the word PHP in your CV (or something similar) you'll get a flood of IT jobs

Yep. A good while ago, I added T-shirts, short hair, fig newtons, beer, speeding and disorderly conduct to my list of skills. Doesn't matter.

Here is the evidence: https://twitter.com/wundercounter/status/570454045099307008

That's amazing. I was going to post that here as a follow-up, but you beat me to it. :)

That says authenticity. You're thought leader material now!

I once worked for a design agency that was building the website of a major super PAC run by the son of a governor that most people on HN probably despise. I was tasked with turning the designer's PSDs into a Wordpress site and one section was bios of all the officers.

My contact at the client gathered up all the photos and bios and emailed them to me. Maybe 25% of the photos were professional headshots. The majority were just crappy cell phone pictures.

The rest were people at parties holding a beer. I emailed my contact to make sure he wanted me to use these and he told me to go ahead. Sure enough, a day after we went live I get a pissed-off call from him demanding to know why I used those photos.

Where do you draw the line? is it OK for me to have a shaggy beard? How about long hair? Tattoos?

My personality is my personality, and when you hire me you're going to get the whole thing. If you can't handle it, I rather you don't even talk to me in the first place.

I look forward to a future where nobody cares about this stuff.

One should note that Apple has basically no dress code, at all. Sandals, dreads, etc. and it has a history of this culture.

If your personality needs beer to work then it has a problem. LinkedIn is for business, not partying.

Shaggy beard, long hair, and tattoos are part of what's going to be at the job. You're not going to be drinking beer on the job.

I was more surprised that after four successful interviews, my poor web-presence was enough to nullify that success.

I also want to work with religious nuts, boring fuckwads, skiing junkies, food fetishists, and closet crocheters, as well as fellow social drinkers; and I want them all to be able to keep their oddities out of the workplace. It doesn't suggest a human amount of social intelligence to have a divisive image on your public profile.

That was my thought.