So, earlier this week I was at a lawyers’ convention and ended up in a hospitality suite, having a beer with a lawyer I’d never met before, from a different province, talking about the future of the legal profession.
Today, I logged into Linked-In, and there in the “people you might know” suggestions was the guy I was having a beer with earlier this week.
How on earth did that happen? How does Linked-In know I’d met him?
He probably looked at your profile
Given the state of most people at Bar hospitality rooms at that time of night, that’s quite a feat of memory…
If you didn’t swap cards to remember each other by (or, really, even if you did), he probably checked on LinkedIn later that night or the next morning to remind himself who you were, and to see whether you might be a useful contact or not.
LinkedIn realizes he’s a lawyer, you’re a lawyer, and he’s looking at your profile, so he goes in the list of people you might know.
Do you have the Linked-In smartphone app? It might be reporting your location to Linked-In. Maybe even down to you guys being in the same building or even the bar, but even if it only reports your city-level location maybe just the fact that you guys are in the same field and (currently) in the same city might have led to the suggestion.
Of course, if the other guy had the app on his phone, maybe he just checked your profile while you were in the bathroom.
No exchange of cards, no linked-in app on my phone. He must just have an impressive late night memory!