What’s the worst thing you can do on Linkedin?

By Neil Patrick

Today I have been reading gripes about LinkedIn from people complaining that they get endless approaches from recruiters…nice problem.

Some even go so far as to say that this is so annoying it makes them want to take down their profile.

I do not know what these people do that makes them so attractive to recruiters but, I suspect they are not high flying professionals; much more likely they are workers in high turnover jobs like bar work, call centers and sales.

In other words they are getting a lot of recruiters contacting them not because they are so awesomely talented, but because there are always lots of vacancies to fill in their field, and their jobs have a high turnover.

If I am right, then it is ironic that the people who could do with some career progression more than most are also the ones who are hating LinkedIn.

Anyway, all this whinging got me thinking about the things people do on LinkedIn that I really do not like.

In no particular order here they are:

Posting Junk

You know, all those brain teaser tests, pictures of lions (promoting LinkedIn Open Networking) and ‘inspirational’ quotes. I’m happy with these on Twitter, but not LinkedIn please!

Invitations to join groups that are irrelevant to me

I like LinkedIn Groups – I’m a member of about 30. But when LinkedIn has such a rich data content of who every member is and what they do, and I get an invitation to join a Group which is completely irrelevant to me, it tells me that the group owners are just blasting out invitations to everyone. Not a Group I want to be a member of thank you. It‘s just sloppy work all round.

Invitations to share my email address

If you wish to email me, my address is on my contact details. Why would I want to add it to a giant spam list? No thanks.

Invitations to connect with no words of introduction

I am an in fact an open networker. Unless you are clearly a spammer or other undesirable, I accept all invitations to connect. But probably 80-90% of the invitations I receive just have the default ‘I’d like to add you to my network on Linkedin’ message. I don’t mind what you say by way of introduction, but it’s rude and disrespectful in my view when someone cannot be bothered to show a little courtesy and write just a sentence or two addressed to us personally.

The reciprocal of this is that I try and send a personal message back to everyone who invites me to connect. I reach my own conclusions if they choose to ignore this message.

Anyway, these are my pet hates. I’m sure you have your own too, so do please share them in the comments below and help make LinkedIn a better place for us all.