Experiences with Yahoo, spam, LinkedIn and other things.
Years ago when I discovered I could have two Yahoo emails I set one up just for fun, to never be used. I checked it quarterly and after perhaps two years got one spam. This was about the rate for a decade. Then an increase in unexpected emails. A few months ago I started getting weekly emails from LinkedIn ‘‘Do you know Ben?". Then yesterday I got several emails from LinkedIn’’ Do you know [first and last name]?’’ They were, in each case the first and last name of someone that I had once known back before 1970. Most are now dead. I have not known of any of them since 1970. Most were common names like Bill Jones but one was a fairly unique Scandinavian name and email had the first and last names reversed. BTW, I have never registered at or attempted to use LinkedIn.
I’ve heard that LinkedIn will send you a message asking if you know So-And-So if they do a search on your name, even if So-And-So doesn’t actually send a friend request.
It drives me absolutely mad that there’s no “No” button on LinkedIn e-mails. If you just don’t respond, they send you follow-ups harassing you for a response, but what are you supposed to say to satisfy them?
Heck, sometimes I know the person personally, but I’ve never worked with him or her, so why would I want LinkedIn to connect me to them as a professional referral?
LinkedIn is clearly a service that’s useful to someone, but darned if I can understand how, they seem to encourage indiscriminate connections. In a sea of information like the internet, I can’t imagine that that’s really helpful.
Me neither. I had to make a profile at one point under pressure from an employer, but I have never used it for anything because I can’t figure out what to do with it. If it’s for professional purposes of some kind, shouldn’t all of your “connections” be to people who actually work in your field, not every random person you’ve ever met in your life or haven’t met but want to “connect” anyway for mysterious reasons?
Do any HR types ever look at LinkedIn during the hiring process?
The idea is if you’re looking for a job at Company X & you’re “LinkedIn” to your neighbor’s sister’s third cousin’s (by marriage) daughter’s boyfriend works there you can use him as your inside source to land that job.
Where I currently work, we have 5-figures of employees in multiple buildings/states/countries/continents. As you can imagine a place that large has a formal HR process so when I asked a good friend of mine to help out, his response was to put his name in the referral & they might ask him. He works a couple of miles away, for a different group so it’s not like he could just stop by the desk of my (then potential) boss who he’s good buddies with since he’s never heard of the guy. :rolleyes:
Undoubtedly sometimes it works & if you’re good at networking, which means doing it all the time & not just when you need a new job, you’ll have better results but then you’re not getting to Carnegie Hall unless you practice, practice, practice (or take the F train).
My wife occasionally gets recruited on LinkedIn. I’ve actually gotten one recruitment offer but it wasn’t what I was interested in. Most of the crap that I get is “Do you know XXX”? Probably 3/4 of my connections are people I don’t know or barely know or used to know but hardly know now. I think it’s worthless now because all of the articles are written by other LinkeIn users trying to get ‘hits’ by writing articles.
Recruiters certainly do. That is how I landed my current job.
But I do agree, LinkedIn spams the crap out of you, I do not need to know every time someone looked at my profile, or every time one of my connections has a work anniversary.
You should check LinkedIn to see if there is an account under your name.
If you register for LinkedIn, it will ask to scrape your contact book. Then you can connect with anyone in your book. It will ALSO encourage you to “invite” people from your address book who are NOT on LinkedIn - that can trigger a fair amount of Spam.
Now - you can choose to block a request on LinkedIn if you are a member - easy enough. You can also set higher privacy settings.
I personally find LinkedIn very useful for business, and it has resulted in consulting gigs and permanent positions. Your mileage might vary.