LinkedIn Friends

Or not, as the case may be. I use LinkedIn somewhat reluctantly. It’s a tool that enables me to reach potential clients and it has worked in the past. I can’t be bothered with all the updates and other Facebooky stuff that people indulge in. I also follow LinkedIn’s policy of only connecting with people I know. That said, if someone contacts me wanting to do business and uses the connection request as a precursor to discussions, then fair enough. But I seem to get an awful lot of requests from complete strangers who just want to connect (recruiters seem to be a significant proportion of the offenders here). These strangers use the “I am a friend” selection when indicating how they know me. As I don’t know them from Adam, they are not a friend. I have very few friends. Given this, someone I’ve never met doesn’t qualify. Indeed, this will irritate me enough to bin the request.

And on the subject of recruiters… I don’t use them. Not once has a recruiter ever found me suitable permanent work. This is because, primarily, I operate in a small, niche market that they don’t fully understand and it is one that tends to favour the self-employed contractor. So, I’m not going to connect with a random recruiter who fancies perusing my contacts. Likewise when they see a role they assume I’m a shoe-in for and several of them  start chasing me because I am “ideally suited”, I decline. I am sufficiently aware of the role and the company recruiting (it’s a small world) to realise that, actually, I am entirely unsuited for it. If they cannot do enough research to appreciate the difference between a signalling technician and operational signalling for example, what use are they?

3 Comments

  1. All it’s ever done for me is get me bombarded with requests for CVs for agencies – despite the fact I quite clearly say I retired years ago!

  2. Yeah, friends are overrated. Since moving to Nuzzyland my old mates from the UK have tapered off to oblivion. Although, to be fair, I’m crap at being in touch, myself.

  3. I even have a line in my profile on Linkedin that says I’ll gladly connect, but if we haven’t met, please drop a line to say why you’d like to connect – which 99% ignore. I guess it’s just a numbers game – there must be some people who are happy to throw open their address books to every recruiter. Like you LR I operate in a very niche area – and like you there are probably only 2/3 recruiters who actually know it well, and of them none who are any good.

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