Thing 15 - LinkedIn
I have had no previous experience of LinkedIn other than that of finding unwanted results from the website in Google searches. Whenever I've followed up a link to the site I have been arrested by how sterile and formal it looks. I dare say you can pimp your profile a bit, but it's not designed for frivolity. This is very much the professional end of the social networking wedge.
Helen draws an astute analogy between LinkedIn and Monica from Friends. In a programme peopled with irritating characters, Monica stands out as being - somehow - more irritating than the rest. It's hard to imagine that a character more annoying than the other five might exist, and yet there she is, resplendent in her pedantry and joylessness. And that's the impression I have hitherto held of LinkedIn. Still, in the spirit of intrepidity and obligation, I have created an account for myself.
There are a few reasons why I haven't tried out LinkedIn until now. For one thing, it's for people who like to network. I can see the value of professional networking, but it's just not me. It's not that I lack ambition entirely - future employers please note - but the notion of secret handshakes and backslapping and building up your profile until eventually, inevitably, you become Prime Minister and make your best chum Chancellor, all this puts me off. If one day I should get another job, I hope it will be because of what I know and not who I know. But perhaps this is the attitude of one who lives in a dream world, and I concede that it may be necessary to make some small concession to LinkedIn, in case of emergency.
For another thing, what would I put on my profile? This is the only real job I've ever had. When I applied for this one, I included my GCSE results (including grades, natch) on my application form. GCSEs! That kind of thing stops being of interest to anyone, let alone potential employers, after about the first week of A-levels. And presumably nobody cares how I did in my piano exams either.
Still, it turns out my adult life has not been as entirely devoid of incident as I had believed, and so here I am. I managed to pad things out somewhat with undergraduate sidelines and stuff I got up to in my gap year. I can't pretend that my current status of '0 connections' is likely to cause me any sleepless nights, though I fear it does make me look a bit like Joseph Heller's Major Major Major Major ('Even among men lacking distinction he inevitably stood out as a man lacking more distinction than all the rest, and people who met him were always impressed with how unimpressive he was.').
Anyway, if you would like to get in touch to offer me a job, you know where to look.
First off, thanks for the mention :)
ReplyDeleteI completely agree with you about LinkedIn being for people who like to network, and I think it's especially for people who like to network in a way that doesn't require that much effort, save for entering a few details copied and pasted from a CV onto a website and possibly agonising over whether or not to include the 50m front crawl swimming badge earned twenty years ago.
I'm not trying to suggest that people that use LinkedIn heavily are inherently lazy, or anything. Rather, there's a sort of assumption that something like LinkedIn is an appropriate substitute for the generally benevolent and mutually interested networking that is actually a positive part of the profession, and that it's just about buttering up potential future employers. I think if the use of the site is going to be in any way productive it should be secondary to, and it should complement, an already focused scheme of being nice to the people in high places ;)