A Linkedin mistake none of us should allow ourselves to make.

Yesterday I received the following Linkedin message from the President of an executive search firm based on the East Coast:

"Bill:

I saw your profile on LinkedIn and wanted to be connected with you on LinkedIn.

Please add my profile to your LinkedIn contacts.

My profile is: www.linkedin.com

If by chance, LinkedIn asks you for my email when adding me to your contacts, please use: myemail@abc.com

Thanks again. I look forward to your feedback."

Best Regards,

George M

Although I still get these occasional messages from random people not associated with recruiting, this one ticked me off frankly. Not that there was anything malicious about the message itself, but because it came from someone who should know better when it comes to establishing professional relationships with peers, clients and candidates.

First of all, I appreciate it when there is a GENUINE interest in connecting with me. I believe in paying it forward at all times. Unfortunately, the way this individual decided to go about trying to establish a professional relationship made me decide not to connect. It's rather unfortunate that with all of the great insights out there regarding how to successfully go about social networking and networking in general, that this supposed experienced search professional and president of a firm is still in the dark.

So what's wrong with this correspondence? First of all, there's nothing that leads me to believe this guy actually looked through my profile. "I saw your profile and wanted to connect." "So what?" is my first inclination. Why does he think it would make sense for us to connect? Look at this as if I were a candidate.."what's in it for me?" I've connected with some great thought leaders and peers in our industry via Linkedin and in every case that I initiated the contact, I had either followed their blog for some time or read an article that made me want to get to know that person. In my note to them, I conveyed what motivated me to contact them and why I felt connecting via Linkedin would be another great way to stay in contact. In every case, I recieved a personal reply that showed that they in fact had looked at my profile in depth and wanted to learn more about me and my experience to see where we could help each other in the future. That's paying it forward and it's a great start to a professional relationship.

Second, the tone of the message makes this guy come across as a command and control type. Even though he says please, in essence, it comes across as though he is telling me to add him to my list of contacts. Again, if I were a candidate (especially GEN Y), I would say to myself "who the heck are you trying to tell me what to do pal? I don't even know you! Get a life!" Have you ever heard the old saying "when you assume, you make an ass out of you and me?" Well George M assumed.

When you make a professional introduction, you need to realize that the person you are soliciting is actually doing you a favor by considering your proposal. They're busy just like you. You need to convey your value proposition in order for them to justify the personal investment of time required to take the process to the next level (a phone call or face to face meeting). Not only does George not take this into consideration, but he assumes (double helping of ass'ism) I will actually want to make the effort invite him to be a part of my network and provides me his email address to get around the fact he's too lazy or stupid to figure out mine (probably a healthy dose of both..oops, now I'm assuming).

The random shotgun approach utilized by so many recruiters including this search firm owner only confirms the fact that so many of us still have a lot to learn or revisit in regards to the basics. If you're only motivation for connecting is to add another connect, do yourself and the people you solicit a favor and don't waste your time. If you can demonstrate where there is some true mutual benefit by getting to know one another, you may have fewer connections, but a much healthier network of contacts that will pay dividends down the road.

Let me know what you think!!!

Best,

Bill Ward

Next Post >

Comment by Marjie Gray on December 7, 2009 at 10:49am: It's about time somebody said this. For some reason LinkedIn users feel they need to connect to anyone and everyone without knowing the 'value' in the relationship. These requests are lowering the value of connections within LinkedIn and LinkedIn themselves should focus more on 'adding value' by better educating those who use this site. The bigger LinkedIn gets the less value it is as a business resource because of practices by the users to connect to anyone.

Also, it's amazing how bossy / demanding those who send these requests are by telling you how to respond by ignoring rather than declining so not to 'affect' their LinkedIn 'status'. Connections are meant to benefit business relationships not just to 'collect' names.

Comment by Meagan Leddick on December 7, 2009 at 11:17am: @ Ambrish great analogy.

In my opinion it looks like this gentlement got lazy and forgot that real people are going to read his request, not a computer. Thank you for reminding me to never loose the human touch!

Comment by Jessica Holbrook on December 9, 2009 at 12:00pm: Hi Bill,
Thank you so much for this article. I am so pleased to see that I'm not the only one that gets frustrated by this. I actually wrote two blog articles about something very similar. You can check it out both articles on my blog. A big LinkedIn No No... and The Best LinkedIn Invitations.

Thanks for sharing!
Jessica Holbrook
Great Resumes Fast
http://www.greatresumesfast.com

Comment by Drew Graham on December 9, 2009 at 1:10pm: Even before I read the meat of your story, the hair on my neck stood up... his message seemed a bit shmarmy. Give me a reason to join, make it worth both our time... win-win is great, win-win-win better. NIce post.

Comment by Bill Ward on December 9, 2009 at 1:51pm: Simon...Now that is hilarious. I knew you had more to add!

Karla...I really enjoy your blog. Thanks for taking the time to read my first attempt and commenting!

Marjie.. You are right. The value of Linkedin will be severely diminished if we don't scrutinize who we are connecting with. Furthermore, ensuring that you keep your relationships intact is absolutely critical. Think about it, have you connected with everyone in your network in some fashion in the last 90 days? If not, it's time to reconnect.

Meagan..Thanks for reading and commenting! You're very welcome.

Jessica...Thanks for attaching the links to your posts. I will certainly read them. I'll be sure to visit your site as well.

Drew...I struggled with the title..I'm glad to see it had the effect I was looking for (and you read my post!) You make the logic behind a connection seem so simple and straight forward...that's because it should be as you clearly point out! Thanks for reading, commenting and complimenting!

Have a terrific Holiday Season everyone! I've enjoyed hearing from all of you and I look forward to reading/hearing from you here on Recruitingblogs.com and Linkedin!

Best Regards,

Bill Ward

Comment by Jay Perreault {DCTechRecruiter} on December 9, 2009 at 3:00pm: Bill,

I like your smart and to the point remarks regarding messages like this. I agree! I see that you follow Jim Stroud and Maureen Sharib. You will see me networking in both of these areas. Have you considered following Vincent Wright from My Linking Power Forum or Ryan Leary from Cruiter Talk? If you would like to learn about other well networked people to follow in our industry (my suggestions) please either follow me at: http://twitter.com/DCTechRecruiter or linkup: http://tinyurl.com/Join-Networks-on-LinkedIn if and only if you see value.

What type of work did you do with Gap? I saw the information under your client listings. My cousin supplies their lighting nationally through Capitol Lighting in CT. Nice, fair stable company. Make it a great Holiday!

Regards,

Jay
DCTechRecruiter
202-596-5411

Comment by Bill Ward on December 9, 2009 at 3:27pm: Jay,

Thanks for reading. I am always open to learning. More than happy to follow you on twitter.

GMR supported GAP for years. We successfully conducted a CIO search, countless director and VP level searches for IT, operations and global supply chain. GAP was a great company before Paul Pressler was hired. The culture changed dramatically (bringing in a band of loyal lieutenants rarely works because they only tell you what you want to hear...typical of a command and control style), great people left and GAP has been trying to repair the damage ever since Pressler's departure.

Best,

Bill

Comment by Amy Lurier on December 11, 2009 at 11:19am: As a veteran "headhunter" this greatly disturbs me. When I reach out to people, I tell them why immediately. Yes I view their profile that is how I get there name, but the fact that he wasn't honest in his approach is upsetting. This is why it is so difficult for recruiters that do a good job get nasty comments back from hiring managers because of the hound dog approach of other recruiters. Our industry already has an uphill battle, why make it more difficult by behaving badly.

Comment by Elizabeth Law on December 11, 2009 at 11:57am: Terrific posting Bill.

Comment by Recruiting Animal on December 20, 2009 at 9:37am: Billy, don't you understand LinkedIn? It's a numbers game and you're just a number to me. And I'm happy to be a number to somebody else. So stop whining that you don't like your invitations and just approve them.

Here's a real problem: When people invite you to invite them into your network without telling you why they're not spending their invitations to invite you.

When I see those, fbomb University is the first phrase that comes to mind. And then: shove it up your association.

Most of these people have spent all of their invitations and they are worth connecting to because they have so many connections - numbers, Billy - but not everyone does it for that reason. They just want to shvindle you out of your invites.

I've seen career coaches advise people to send strangers requests to link to them. What kind of bull shipment is that?