Tuesday, July 28, 2015

Why I Am Probably Not Inviting You to My LinkedIn Network

Many of us have accepted some loss of privacy as the price of being on the wonderful, wonderful, Internet.


I belong to LinkedIn, in my work career life.  LinkedIn  is a social network for the business community.

My preference is to keep my business and my blogging life totally separate.  I do not, in fact, normally accept invites from other bloggers who are not in my career field, because I do not earn my living by blogging or writing. (Come to think of it, that is worth a post of its own.)  Nor do I network with people on LinkedIn unless I know them personally, or know of them by reputation.  Even if I know them personally as friends (true friends, not Facebook friends), I also need to know something about their professional lives, and will not "endorse" them unless I am certain of what they do, and how well they do it.

LinkedIn has a feature by which you can ask them to use your email address to find out people you may know on LinkedIn.  So far, I have chosen not to use that feature.

Which is why I was surprised to find an email from LinkedIn suggesting I might want to make networking contacts with some people.  That in itself didn't surprise me; I get those emails from time to time. What did surprise me was the people the LinkedIn email suggested.

The people they suggested are people whose email addresses I have - but not because of my work life.  No, these are contacts from my caregiving life.  A man at the VA (Veterans Administration) I've spoken to a couple of times, and emailed a document to once.  A woman who has done some work for my family, which included me needing to email her.  A couple of more people that, again, I have no professional associations with.  I only had their emails because I needed to communicate with them by email for them to complete a service.

And, oh yes, one of my cousins.  A cousin who is 40 years younger than me and, again, in a totally different career field than I am.

One person may have been a coincidence.  Maybe some people I know in my professional life have one such person in their network.  But several, listed all at once?  Coincidence?  I don't think so.  It looks like LinkedIn has decided it will go through my address book, after all, although I never knowingly gave my consent.

I didn't like it.  But, if I want to stay on LinkedIn, I am going to have to live with it.

And, if you do invite me to network on LinkedIn, please know why I may not.  I don't know if I am being too picky, but I feel this is what I need to do.

If you are on LinkedIn (I promise I won't try to contact you), have you had similar experiences?  Do you welcome anyone to link with you?  Or, do you use certain criteria?

2 comments:

  1. I never used LinkedIn but have often received requests from folks who do. When I asked one person why she keeps asking me to say I know her, she said she did not, that her account was hacked. A couple of years later I received a request from a politico that I am constantly criticizing and knew that she must have been hacked too. Or more stupid than I originally thought.

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  2. I once got an email asking me to include someone in my LinkedIn, but I don't have a LinkedIn, so I ignored it. Then the email got resent. I guess someone I met somewhere wanted me to join his whatever-it-is, but didn't get the hint. I don't have a LinkedIn account and have no idea what it is or how to use it.

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