Why is profile completion so important to LinkedIn?

out of the blue question...

Common ground:

LinkedIn: a social network aimed for professional world.

Profile: Individual profile with all the professional data of person. 

Mission: to connect the world professionals to make them more productive and successful.

Clarifying questions:

* Is there any exisitng friction in the profile completion? 

Ans: not that I am aware of!!

* any stats on incomplete profiles over a period of 3 months? 

Ans: 5% and Increasing

* what is profile completion here? is it regular updates or the initial completion! 

Ans: both

ok, lets talk in terms of what it means to user and LinkedIn separately. first with users..

who would be on linkedIn!! 

• job seekers
• professionals
• students
• Recruiters 
• content creators
• organizations

Why are they on LinkedIn for?

• To connect with colleagues ( see what they are doing)
• To learn new things
• To seek mentors
• To hire
• To find a job
• To share their professional events (promotion, new job, success)
• To maintain a portfolio
• To form a Network

What information is needed for all this to be done?

• what do you do professionally!!
• what are your aspirations!!
• what did you study!!
• What have you worked on!! (previous and current projects)
• what are your skills!! 
• what are trying to improve on!!
• whom do you know!!

where do you find all this Information!!!! 

PROFILE

so with out a profile, all the things you can do with LinkedIn are not productive. 

for LinkedIn: 

if no one is completing the info or updating, the interest of the users to use linkedIn would decrease. which leads to a lower MAU.

profile is data, without data it cannot make necessary recommendations(ads). lesser recommendations means lesser revenue.

their mission to make them productive in variety of ways cannot be achieved. 

Necessary actions:

can dig deeper into what is the friction in filling the information, through the user journey. 

provide easy ways to record information. like voice, resume etc..

Summary: 

it is clear from the above explanation that, without completing/updating the profile information, the users cannot get the essence of LinkedIn and even the company cannot sustain.