Common sense & LinkedIn: when worlds collide
I would file this particular entry about things you shouldn’t do, either on LinkedIn or in real life, under “common sense,” but that would be silly because common sense ain’t so common. Yesterday, a friend, who owns a small yet rapidly-expanding business, was telling me about the unfortunate encounter she had with another other small business owner, whom she hired for a certain set of services. My friend was appalled because this woman, after consistently doing a crap job for my friend, following the (unpleasant) experience, had the gall to send my friend an invitation to connect on LinkedIn. I cackled because otherwise, all I could have done was cried. Hmmm, you piss off your customers, you make it clear that you don’t care about their business needs…and then you want to connect with them? Oh vey.
These are people who are missing the point about LinkedIn, not to mention, about life in general. These are the people who have 500+ connections, but can’t get a job, or their business is falling to pieces and you want to say, “Oh. Interesting. YA THINK???”
If you check out my LinkedIn profile (CarlotaZimmerman), you’ll notice, boys and girls, that I have relatively few connections. That is because I know, personally, all of my connections: they’re friends, clients, former colleagues, mentees, business partners and, wait for it, people I actually like and respect. (Oh, I know: me and my crazy standards.) My LinkedIn connections are people who, if they asked me for a recommendation, I’d said, “Oh, of course, it’d be my pleasure!” That means, there are many people I know who I will not connect with on LinkedIn. I get requests from certain sketchy people that make me laugh bitterly, as I hit the “are-you-f**king-kidding-me?” button. If you’re an ex-boyfriend, or you have a photo of a cat as your profile photo, or a title like, “hustla,” yeah, keep it moving, nothing to see, good luck with that.
I worked in TV news around the world for ten years, so yes, there are many, MANY people I worked with, whom I wouldn’t connect with on pain of death. If I personally have experienced your incompetence, if I know you’re crazy…why would I want to connect with you? (Spoiler alert: I WOULDN’T.)
If you think numbers matter on LinkedIn, you’re missing the point: YOU matter. YOUR goals matter. LinkedIn is only as useful as you allow it to be. If you’re on it for reasons unknown to humanity, than nope, it’s not going to be very helpful. The amount of people in your network only matters as much as who each person is, and how you know them, and how you treat them. Trust me: there’s a lot of unemployed people out there with 600 connections. There’s a lot of under-employed people, or people running failing businesses with 700 connections. There’s a lot of people who are connected to people who wouldn’t help them network a job if their lives depended on it. (Oh, and P.S.: your LIFE does depend on networking.) Those people are missing the point of LinkedIn. And life. #dontmindme
If you’re going to bother being on LinkedIn, bueno: now take the time to figure out what you want, so you can create a strategy, so you can create a profile that allows you to achieve what you want. (“Oh, Carlota, you and your thing about bringing logic into humanity: when will you ever learn? These are the same people who think that George Clooney finally met the right woman!”) Around this same time, maybe also start working on your emotional intelligence, in order to realize that how you treat other people will determine how you are treated. Honest, authentic behavior will always help you more than that network of 1000 strangers.
