LinkedIn Etiquette: Don’t Make This Mistake
May 27, 2007 by admin
Filed under Professional Development
Have you heard of LinkedIn?
It’s a great website that allows you to keep up with business contacts, network and share information.
….you can view my profile on LinkedIn if your interested in additional information.
Recently, I was doing a search for old contacts and I stumbled on an old colleague of mine. She wasn’t in my network so I decided to reach out.
Normally the process works by sending a nice respectful note and asking them to join your network. Once they read their note they can decide to accept or decline the offer.
I am going to share with you what NOT to do on LinkedIn.
So, I send a very friendly and professional note to this person (She was the VP of HR at a company I had worked for in the past), approximately a month ago. I hear nothing back.
But then one day I log into my email account and notice I have a request form this person, asking me to forward on their job opportunity to somebody in my network.
Here’s were it gets interesting. This person is now head of her organization and she doesn’t even have the decency or the business acumen to send me a hello, long time no talk email. Just a note to the person in my network.
This is exactly how you do not want to conduct business through LinkedIn. It is rude and unprofessional.
You would think that she had more sense.
Now that I think about it, she was trained from an organization that didn’t value people and I guess the apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree.
This is the age of web 2.0, a time when effective social networking is key.
So, when using LinkedIn to build your network make sure you present yourself professionally. It goes a long way!
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