2 Reasons Why I Won’t Connect With You On LinkedIn

For those of you who don’t know what LinkedIn is, it’s a professional social network. Think of it as a place to put your online resume and connecting with others. Use it for business opportunities, like getting a job, creating partnerships, things like that.

From an offline perspective, let’s say you’re looking for a job and you really want to work for “XYZ Corporation”. You ask a buddy of yours if he knows of someone who works there. He says, “Sure, let me hook you up,” and does so. Your chances of getting a job there have just doubled.

I’m speaking from experience because that’s exactly how I got in the door to the place I work now. I like LinkedIn.

Two reasons why I choose to delete your invitation:

1. If your profile is nothing more than a list of company names, job titles, and the times you worked there, then I’m rejecting you. Why are you wasting my time with information I can’t use? Tell me what you did. What makes you special? What can you offer me? How do we complement one another?
2. If you’re too lazy to write a genuine and personalized invitation to connect with me, then I’m too lazy to accept. I get so many of these, and to tell the truth, I’m probably a little more lenient on these then I should be because they work for a company that has a high profile or something along those lines.

As with any social network, there’s a certain amount of respect you must give to its members if you are to make this thing really work for you. For example, when I receive invitations to connect with other members, LinkedIn does make it rather easy for them by providing templates explaining why that person would like to connect with me. Trouble is, these invitations are a bit demeaning to experienced users because they explain the benefits of connecting.

Excuse me, but I have over 2,000 connections in my network. I think I know the benefits, thank you very much. So when I receive such invitations, you better have a darn good profile for me to consider that’ll keep me from flushing your invitation down the cyberdrain.

[tags]linkedin,connections,social network[/tags]

Popularity: 4% [?]

• Please Sir, May I Have Some More Joost?: So, everybody has a Joost account? I posted yesterday that I have invitations to give away, and I received a few replies. You can be...
• Want Some Joost?: I was fortunate enough to receive an invite to Joost Beta. So far it looks very interesting and has a decent selection of channels. I...
• 2 Reasons I Stopped Following You On Twitter: Like I mentioned in my last post, I was a late-joiner to Twitter. When I first saw it, I saw things like, “Hey, I’m shopping...