LockedIn
LinkedIn, I’ve got a bone to pick with you.
I am no stranger to getting jobs because of (and luckily, for now, not in spite of) social media. My first job in my current office was offered to me as a rising third year in college, based on a now coworker seeing a photo album on Facebook. The next three jobs, because of a blog I had started as a first year student. The next, because I managed to wrangle all my excitement and enthusiasm into a series of writing samples (one of which was written in tweet form) that landed me in my first Big Kid full-time job. In fact, in creating my LinkedIn profile, I began with the employment section of my Facebook profile, which had listed all my student jobs up until that point. It had a complete digital record of where I had worked, and in many cases, a portfolio of work I had done.
This is the world I live in. My current job exists because of the networks that we use on a regular basis. I’m developing relationships, professional and otherwise, with the help of social spaces every day, whether I’m actively doing something online or not. I’m a person who makes things, shares, and organizes them on social media. I work in a highly visible position in a highly visible space. LinkedIn should be a natural extension of what I do, right? Well…
Every time I open LinkedIn — let’s be honest, it’s still a few times a week — I spend at least five minutes attempting to parse what the hell I’m supposed to be doing in this space. Every time. Everything I thought about in the past rushes past my ears and makes me wonder if my feelings toward this platform will ever change. Here’s where they stand now.
It’s not what I do, it’s what you think I do.
After receiving my second endorsement in the same number of days for a skill I don’t possess, this tweet led to a panoply of LinkedIn critique:
I’m getting endorsed on LinkedIn for things I don’t work with. Do I: ignore, remove, or take it as an encouragement to try new things? (1)
(I recommend reading the conversation that ensued; it’s worth it.)
Up until this series of endorsements, I haven’t had any feelings one way or another about this new feature. It’s a game, really, and as Allie Morse describes, “It’s a good time killer in a helpful way that puts Farmville to shame.” (2) In a world where my qualifications might be less about what I do and more about what other perceive my work to be, these endorsement things might have a purpose. But.
If you believe that I have a skill that I don’t have, should I have it? (And what inspired you to endorse me for it? If it’s a LinkedIn algorithm, I think we’ll need another skeleton for the bones I’ll need to pick with this site.) Perhaps yes, since I’m working in a budding field and perhaps someone, somewhere has figured out another set of skills that could be valuable to me moving forward. If I do not possess a particular skill, what is my role in managing these endorsements? (Respecting the fact that you took the time to give it to me.) Ryan Brazell may have said it best, “The responsibility of making sure a profile/resume is correct lies with the individual who owns it.” (3)
A crowdsourced list of qualities is but one part of LinkedIn, a social feature unlike any of the others on the site. What makes this different than any other part of the site? Strength in numbers means credibilty, assigning my work unfounded worth. If we’re playing with the give and take of professionalism, there must be some value to these endorsements, deserved or not. But after reading this article by Matt Asay, I’m more convinced that it’s an annoyance — noise, not signal — rather than a strange perk of the platform. If we’re intentional about making connections on LinkedIn, we must also be intentional in making endorsements. Those, it seems, are valuable because they vouch for your and your skills, far more than a initial connection.
To paraphrase Hilary Marsh from a conversation on the inherent values of social spaces for professional development (though the chat itself was prompted by LinkedIn — maybe it is good for something after all!): don’t just do social media all the time. You have to go out and do stuff to make your social media life more interesting. What should that mean to you? Stop endorsing me and do something exciting, so exciting that I have no choice but to actively endorse you IRL. And then later, maybe, when I’m killing time online, on LinkedIn, too.
Highly visible doesn’t mean my actions need to be.
I work in a field in flux and am genuinely curious about how my peers frame their work, education, and professional experiences. I spend time looking at my friends’ sites, in particular their about sections, and occasionally, peruse their LinkedIn profiles, too. I suppose LinkedIn isn’t necessarily about the story, but it’s about the supporting shiny details. Not extraneous personal details — though, to be perfectly honest, I have a much better idea about YOU and how you do things if I see a variety of content, not just a listing of your polished credentials — the ones that are theoretically most important to the thing that brings me to LinkedIn on any given day: work.
Now that it’s so front and center on my account upon login to note who has recently viewed my profile, I am acutely aware of who I choose to view and why I do so on LinkedIn. Some make sense. Some don’t. Does it mean anything if I view your profile? If you see my face pop up, don’t worry about it. But if I see your face pop up, I do. (Strange, isn’t it?) Receiving notifications makes visits feel like they should mean something and now my dopamine receptors are confused. I question why your face is there, how you found me, and above all else, now what am I supposed to do? (How will I ever sleep at night knowing that my profile was viewed by 10 professionals in the last three days?)
Two sides of empty.
A Side: It’s truly a punch in the social media gut to get an impersonal form message from LinkedIn asking me to connect with an individual. The final kick is when the profile of the individual is completely blank. No face, nothing listed, professional or otherwise, except usually a user has filled out the education field. Perhaps because it’s encouraged by career services professionals? Or summer internship employers?
I recognize that it’s exceptionally hard to ask someone not only to write about themselves, their skills, and their work, but it’s even harder to ask for another person in a professional situation for anything — from something as small as an invitation to something as large as an introduction or a recommendation. Maybe this is why endorsements work so well: you don’t have to ask anything of anyone except that initial invite. But as the person on the other side of that invite: it’s hard to accept an invitation of an exoskeleton.
B Side: I’ve attempted to filter nearly everything that LinkedIn sends me to a folder that skips my inbox regularly, and yet, and yet, I still get at least one per day that slips through. Respect my time, respect my inbox, and I will respect your space even more. (There’s a piece of writing that’s been percolating for about three years now about LinkedIn is the most masterful of pyramid schemes, in no small part because of their emailing structure. It is, but this is neither the time nor the place. I’ll leave you for now with this spot-on video on precisely this topic by my cinema cohort Patrick Willems.)
The favor test.
Not familiar with the “favor test” for LinkedIn? It’s a proposed model for approving invitations on LinkedIn, elaborated over on the Harvard Business Review by Alexandra Samuel. It says that the way to determine whether to connect with someone on LinkedIn is to ask “Would I do a favor for you or would you be willing to do one for me?” But for me, the question is, “Will seeing things from me, about me (or from you, about you) be favorable in the long run?”
In fact, I like thinking about all social media as a series of favors. If you’ve trusted me/my brand with your eyes, what I’m giving you needs to be worth your while. This doesn’t stop with how we communicate with each other when we set our sights on conversation but rather, always.
Hilary brought up another good point in our conversation, in particular regarding LinkedIn connections. I don’t know Hilary beyond Twitter (but perhaps we will meet face to face one day!) and when I asked for editors to collaborate on a draft of this piece, she raised her hand in the form of a tweet. She noted in a followup message that she’d love to talk on the phone, so we exchanged numbers and went from there.
Following our chat, Hilary and I became connected on LinkedIn, which brings me to a different layer of the favor test: am I willing to take a ten minute phone call with you? No, not a cold call to buy your product, but one with a purpose, to exchange a few ideas, to settle prying questions, or just connect with another human being over a common topic for a moment or two otherwise spent in a solitary social space. (Ironic, isn’t it?)
Everyone has something to offer. This is by far the most amazing thing that comes to light when you operate in a social space, and something that will, without fail, make me overwhelmingly excited about my field. A social connection means that you’re willing to do something for someone, whether we know it or not. Just by signing up for a service, you said yes, didn’t you? Perhaps, with the next person you see visiting your profile, the next person who sends you an invite, you don’t stop at “Okay, you are here. So am I. I clicked yes, and that’s it.” Take it one step farther, and connect. But really connect, not the loaded phrase that comes with digital means these days and usually involves a click or two before we head off into another space.
As an educator, I teach about social tools constantly and I find it fundamentally challenging to advocate for a site that encourages social behaviors that are counter-intuitive to their mission. I am not an arbiter of right and wrong social behavior — no two people use social media the same way; that’s what makes it fun, frustrating, and above all else, a reason to share how I think about something so that it makes you think more about the choices that you can make.
But even as an educator, it’s a startling moment to realize that you don’t know everything and will continue learning from others around you, constantly, and that will make you a better teacher in the long run. Even in the process of writing this, I’ve found that I should try harder to understand the world of LinkedIn, if only to be more knowledgable about what’s out there. Hey, I’m still learning. So are we all.
Think we have something to talk about? We can connect on LinkedIn. But beware: I’m still learning, and remember to think twice before you endorse me.
