I’m a member of a newly forming group that has decided to network through LinkedIn and I have no experience with that (though I did look over the Wikipedia article). How is LinkedIn customarily done?
I take it I post real information about myself including name and professional affiliations and contact info – is that right? Do I post my real email address?
I know annoying and opportunistic people who are on LinkedIn and keep sending me invites – they are not part of this newly forming group. If I do join LinkedIn, are these annoying and opportunistic people going to be able to climb all over me, and exploit the contacts that I do care about? Am I going to bring a shitrain of spam down on my real friends and friends’ friends?
What are some of the things that just are not done in proper LinkedIn custom? For example, do I discuss other people by name? How do I promote things I care about? Do I contact whatever strangers and bare acquaintances I feel like contacting, or do I wait for introductions or something? How am I supposed to think about my presence there? What are typical offensive behaviors for unknowing beginners?
LinkedIn is similar to Facebook in that you have several privacy controls for your own information. You’ll want to look through the Privacy & Settings screen pretty thoroughly, but you should be able to get to a comfortable level.
Real name and e-mail, yes. The site’s primary purpose is professional networking, so an alias doesn’t make a lot of sense. You can restrict who can view your profile (including your e-mail) to your connections only.
You will still get “Invitations” to connect, but you can safely ignore them (or report them as spam). You can also control who can see your connections, so they will not have access to your friends.
Well, it’s a pretty wide range of acceptable behavior. It’s supposed to be a professional network, so the links and articles shared tend to be business and management oriented (and you can post to Connections only or Public, just like Facebook). Your group will have its own discussion board as well. I would think discussing other people by name within your group would be fine (as long as you’re not insulting them!).
There’s a couple of different views on contacting strangers; some people use LinkedIn to try to connect to as many people as possible, but most of the advice I’ve seen is to start with people you actually know in real life. Requesting a connection to someone you don’t know is not actually verboten, but it would be a good idea to include a message with the invite that explains what you might have in common and/or why you want to connect (the standard LinkedIn form is a simple one-line “I’d like to add you to my professional network on LinkedIn.” and should be changed to something more personable). LinkedIn itself places a little bit of emphasis on connections, and you can’t get to “All-Star” on their Profile Strength meter without at least 50 connections (other criteria include how complete your work history and education slots are).
One of the basic errors people make upon joining is to inadvertently spam their contacts with connection invites. This is because LinkedIn offers to scan your address book to find current contacts already in their system, and if you’re not careful, will send invitations to connect to all the e-mail addresses they find. Don’t do this.
Overall, bear in mind it’s for professional use, and your real name is there. Prospective employers may be looking at your profile (if it’s public), and your current employer may or may not have guidelines about whether or not you can list yourself as their employee.
Thank you for your excellent post! Your reply is just the kind of thing I’m looking for.
I should have said I am not on Facebook or any of the other social media things; SDMB is actually the closest I come to that, and it’s not that close. I do use IBM Connections on my company’s intranet, if that’s a useful reference point.
There are elements of convention it’s easy to miss as a newcomer and the invite one sounds worth knowing.
The tip about the address book scanning option is absolutely essential! That’s exactly what I’m leery of discovering!
You’re welcome, and yeah, sorry about the Facebook reference; it’s easy to make the comparison, but also easy to forget not everybody is on there.
If you’ve tinkered with it at all, by now you’ve probably noticed there’s a “Share an update…” text box at the top of the home page, next to your profile picture (if you have one). When you click into it, an option toggle appears underneath that will allow you to select Connections, Public, or Public + Twitter, which restricts or broadcasts that update as indicated. This is for the general type of update that would appear in the Home page news feed.
If you want to post an update to the group only, you should navigate to the group page first - the “Groups” link is under the “Interests” menu on the home page. Once on the group page, you have a different text box that says “Start a discussion or share something with the group…” This kind of update will be posted to the group page, and you will have to select the type of discussion (General, Job, or Promotion).
Something else that just occurred to me - if your profile is public, others will be able to see when you look at their profile (“Who’s viewed your profile” is one of the basic tenets of LinkedIn). You can control this as well - in Privacy & Settings, under Profile, there’s a link to “Select what others see when you’ve viewed their profile” - but if you make yourself anonymous, you won’t be able to see who’s viewed your profile either.
Yes. Note it’s actually a two step process – first they’ll simply compare the addresses of your contacts to their database to see if any of your contacts are already on LinkedIn, and offer to send them invitations. The second part is where you can wind up spamming all of your contacts if you let LinkedIn send invitations to all of the addresses they’ve just read from your contacts.
LinkedIn is an online version of Rotary and Chambers of Commerce. It’s great if you make your money by churning as many associates as you can (e.g., sell insurance) or center your socializing on work-related connections; it’s pretty useless in the rest of the business and industry world.
I disagree. When looking for jobs, you can see if anyone in your network has a connection to the business or the person posting a job and ask your contact for an introduction. I have helped 3 people get interviews this way—they emailed me and said, “Hey, I see you are connected to Sue Smith of Smith Associates. They have a position I’m interested in and I wonder if you can introduce me.” I then email Sue and ask if it’s ok to make the introduction----it’s really important to ask first; don’t just give Sue’s email to your friend!—then if she says ok, I send Sue an email with my friend copied on it, and add a few lines of introduction. They take it from there.
I also have several companies that I’m following in case they post a position. I read blogs. I’m in a few groups. Sure, some people are selling themselves hard to everyone they meet and that gets frustrating, but it’s more useful than just an address book for sales calls.
Everyone I know, uses LinkedIn as a self-updating Rolodex. When your friends and former colleagues change jobs, you can find out easily where they went. And when you get a new position, instead of emailing your entire circle of work aquaintances, just update linkedin.
That’s all. Its a way to keep tabs on people who I know, and whose work I respect, in case I should ever need to ask them something or get/give a referral. I don’t link people I don’t know (ever), and I don’t link people I know but hate.
Mileage varies. I’ve been in and out of LI since it started, and never once found it anything but an irritation of people I didn’t know or want to know (mostly the insurance-salesman types) pestering me for links. I can’t think of a single time anyone found me, or I found anyone else, for any purpose - wait, I did once use it to look up an old work associate, but a quick Google turned him up just as readily.
I’ll assume it has value for some, just like Facebook and Twitter.
Hey, I didn’t call you an asshole. If all I had were people soliciting for sales I’d find it annoying, too, but I learned how to use it an an effective tool for career management and in the 8 years I’ve been on it, I’ve had maybe three sales pitches.
OTOH, you’re the same poster who compared me signing up for a sale site to prostituting myself, so you’ll forgive me if I encourage the OP to read reviews other than just yours.
I’ve used it to reconnect with people I knew in college and to snoop into what their connections are doing with their lives without having to connect with them. My one roommate is still with this college girlfriend and is successful enough to own his own business and a yacht in San Fransisco; we are going to hook up next month on my way to Japan . Our other roommate who I had a failing out with over a girl lost most of his hair (knew it would happen), got fat (didn’t see that one coming) and stayed in the same boring town for almost 30 years. He has quite the sourpuss look on his profile picture. Priceless.
I’m sure there are people out there whose pile was made working Twitter, too. Call it what you like, but I don’t know anyone, in any of my professional or business circles, who thinks LI would be worthwhile if it were free instead of paywalled.
“…now we’re just establishing the price.” Hey, I’m not calling **you **a whore or anything. Maybe you’re just surrounded by them. Most people who are obsessed with “career management” come pretty close, IME.
Ok, we’re straying far from what the OP wanted. But career management means that I’d like to remain in a paying job and relevant in my field as long as I have kids to shelter and feed. Perhaps you are independently wealthy but I am not. And LinkedIn is free for basic membership, which is pretty comprehensive.
Si Amigo (and OP and anyone else who cares), I think the LinkedIn default is that people are notified that you viewed their profile unless you have specifically changed your settings to remain anonymous. So I know that a former boyfriend looked at my profile last week and the fat sourpuss may know that you looked at his. Don’t know if you care about that.
. Our other roommate who I had a failing out with over a girl lost most of his hair (knew it would happen), got fat (didn’t see that one coming) and stayed in the same boring town for almost 30 years. He has quite the sourpuss look on his profile picture. 
Priceless.