Whoo me! I'm deep/insightful/inspiring/delete as appropriate... What is LinkedIn anyway?
I don't do a lot of LinkedIn-ing. I know. And now I'm writing an article. What a tool.
I also don't use Facebook. I just don't find it valuable to me. I know what you're thinking: "but you appear to have 'Digital' in your job title. What are you on about? What's wrong with you?". Possibly a lot. And I'll get it out of the way now, I may just be a miserable old man. Those that know me may agree. I may even agree.
Anyway. I look at LinkedIn probably as much as any other social network. It's a really useful reminder of how your network may have skills in it you'd forgotten about, and that someone has acquired since you worked with them. And yet I only recall one really valuable think I got from LinkedIn social feed style posts (Netflix's culture presentation. Go find it. It's savage but good).
Recently I have been looking at LinkedIn and reading some posts. I am very confused by the sheer simplicity of many of them. They seem to try and reduce human behaviour - and humans - to some odd 'one size fits all' piece of cod philosophy. Or some needy 'please affirm me' plea for validation. I don't get it. People make a living on Twitter, and YouTube, and Instagram, but can you be a "LinkedIn celebrity"? Should you be able to be such a thing?
One such post recently said something like "I had two candidates come and see me for a job. One was very qualified, with lots of academic achievements and relevant experience, and he was able to articulate many reasons why he would be a good fit for the job. The other was much less qualified, but showed huge hunger, enthusiasm and passion for the role, and real drive to learn and succeed. I gave it to the second person. Would you do the same?". Lots of affirmative comments followed. I immediately thought "Admirable message, but I bloody hope you weren't recruiting for a surgeon...".
I like a quote. I find some useful. I find some inspirational. I'm not sure that they're for sharing on LinkedIn. As Oscar Wilde said:
"Most people are other people. Their thoughts are someone else's opinions, their lives a mimicry, their passions a quotation".
See?
I find posts being shared on "What success looks like?" or "Are you doing the right things at work to be happy?". There are always long answers and careful life lessons. I have one for you: Are you happy? If not, change something. If so, keep doing it. Different things make people happy in different ways, so please stop giving me a new yardstick that you think might help me measure my contentment.
So thanks LinkedIn, but how do I mute my feed from the filler that is on it? How can I make it less like Facebook, with endless pictures saying "look at me at my conference which eleventy million people are going to turn up to and worship at the altar of my wonderousness"? How do I pare it back to being what it exists for - a powerful representation of your professional network, with tools to make it actually powerful in a work environment (am I'm talking about people other than recruiters and salespeople)?
Should LinkedIn just focus on being really good at the network stuff? Help me find people I need, or who might be useful or valuable to me, and vice-versa I to them, and I'll be delighted.
Consider that my plea for attention over.
Many good points!! ...
Director at AuxiliaGroup (a merger of The Grey Matters Network, Auxilia Consultants & Curran HR)
7yI enjoyed your article Simon. So good to have someone express a view on your behalf. I would add a couple of further observations. How many of us actually pay any attention to those self-serving FB-like posts, the 'aren't I great' ones, the 'pay attention to ME' posts, we all know them. I certainly don't. I reckon I subconsciously notice (filter) maybe one in twenty posts, the rest I don't even notice never mind make the decision to ignore. The second observation is that whether we 'like' these posts or not, the posters are still craving attention. Is that because they feel so insecure in their current situation that they feel the need to constantly shout out? We have to also remember that there are people whose job it is today to maintain a constant social media presence on behalf of their employer, irrespective of the relevance of the post. It has to be also pointed out that we probably all tend to pay a little more attention to posts from someone who we know will have something relevant to say when they do speak up, the opposite is also true.