There’s a guy that works at my job who is fishing for business for the company, and he’s scheduled meetings with the entire staff and has gone through their Linkedin accounts and made a list of all the people they’re connected to that could be potential business for the company, and is going down the list of everybody they know and asking what their relationship is with that person and what they know about what kind of work the person does, and is asking them to get in touch with that person and set up a meeting with him.
Now, 90% of these people he doesn’t know at all, and has no work relationship with them other than that they come to the same building every day. I sit near his desk and have listened to a good number of his interviews, and most of these people sound pretty uncomfortable that this veritable stranger is asking about all the people they know and is asking them to get him connected with their contacts.
I get that networking is what Linkedin is all about, but something about this feels a little invasive. (BTW I haven’t gotten called for a meeting yet, but I deleted my Linkedin profile [that I never use] the minute I caught wind of this.)
Is this kind of fishing for business professionally appropriate?
This would cause me to cancel my LinkedIn account forevermore. Is he young? Like in his twenties? I’ve noticed that the younger folks seem to have a different definition of privacy than 30s and up do…they seem to not expect it or want it as much as we do.
I’ve tried to make that sentence as neutral and non-judgemental as I possibly could, so please don’t jump on me for ageism.
I do a great deal of networking and friend building in my line of work - I actually train people on the business of facebook, linked in, and some new ones showing up.
What your co-worker is doing is [or seems to me] to be a newbe mistake in trying to think outside the box. A better use of their time would be interviewing people with a targeted list of industry or organizational alignments and seeing if anyone has any input on those.
Asking to view your linked in profile and then further probe your relationship to said contacts is, plainly put, violating your privacy. I’d like to know your industry as this tactic should not be put up with … anywhere.
I agree that this is over the line. What is his position in the company that these people feel obligated to answer his questions? Are their bosses pressuring them to cooperate with him?
My LinkedIn contacts are my resources, not my company’s. This guy wouldn’t get access to it anymore than he’d get access to my contact list of my Yahoo account or my friends on Facebook.
He’s a marketing director. He calls these meetings and I think people either have no idea who he is or why the meeting has been called, or assume it has to do with pertinent business, and they show up.
To his credit he does pepper his interviews with “you can either get in touch with them or not get in touch with them,” but his tone is a little bit “this is what we’re going to do and this is why this is a great opportunity.”
I knew it was sales of some sort…my sister in law worked for Pfizer in sales, and would never EVER give up her contacts to someone, not even a direct supervisor. People generally take those contacts with them to the next job.
To start with, I’m not doing his job for him; he can contact people and set up his own damned meetings. Secondly, my contacts are not walking wallets to be milked for what they can do for some company - this is like a version of spam and phishing and telemarketing involving real human beings. I would not participate in it.
Well, that would be a very repetitive meeting. No, No, No, No, No…
That’s MY contact list, not yours.
Now if a person came to me and told me that they were trying find a way into one company, and my contact looked like a good starting point, I would consider talking to my contact.
If someone I knew and was willing to endorse asked for help looking for a job, I would consider setting up phone call between them and my contact.
But a blanket “I want to talk to every one you know that I might remotely hope to sell to?” No way, ain’t happening.
I guess, but I’m not a networking professional, so Linkedin has been pretty useless for me. I make my business relationships with people the old fashioned way: in person, direct communication, and word of mouth. But that’s just me.
I took a sales call the other day at work. No, we didn’t need to discuss what was being sold. 80 seconds later I had a Linked-In invite from the person who called me. Is that rude or just standard practice now?
Another vote for way over the line. If I were in that situation, I’d feel like I either had to delete my Linked In account or make it private or something, and that deprives ME of using it. If it’s company policy, they need to make that clear. Then I’d delete my account. If it’s this one guy doing it, then he’s crossing the line of propriety in my view.
Sales and advertising people quite frequently either don’t know or don’t care what other people’s boundaries are. All they want is to GET THAT SALE, and building up a contact list is one way to get the sales.
How many times have we heard the old story about a high school or college friend getting back in touch with someone, only to find out that the reason for this renewed friendship is to sell insurance or Amway or something?
Well, people in real life will ask to add me on Facebook. The one thing they won’t do is start bugging my friends, or, worse, try to get me to get my friends to add them. And at least that could possibly be someone with poor social skills who just doesn’t understand. This guy is in sales: if he doesn’t have people skills, he’s in the wrong job.
It’s very much over the line. And people shouldn’t have to be deleting their accounts just to avoid this jerk.
Is what he’s doing approved by his boss? Is it within company policy? Does HR know about it? You might consider raising a stink. Think of how satisfying it would be if he gets his ass chewed out and told to stop it, now. And if the powers that be side with Nosy Joe, it’ll give you an idea of the sort of company you work for and a good excuse to get your resume up to date.