Opinion

The worst LinkedIn behaviours and how to avoid them

D. SriramIn this guest post that was originally published on LinkedIn, D. Sriram lists the behaviour on the business social network that really winds him up.

Normally I ignore all the stuff that shouldn’t be on a LinkedIn post and try to avoid spending time reading rubbish but from time to time it gets a little too much, so I’m going to indulge my ‘peeve list’ a bit. And do a numbered list for a change… starting from five all the way to my number one peeve.

5. Pointless puzzles, mazes and maths questions

Seriously, that’s the only thing you could find to post? Why is it relevant to people on LI? What’s unique about it? If you wanted to encourage people to relax for a few moments during their workday why not post a link to sites which have all this trivia instead of providing one specific example?

4. Inane quotes (usually misattributed), fake stories and trite homilies

The latest in this series is some guff about wolf packs being led by the weakest so that they don’t fall behind and the youngest and strongest members hanging back to protect the rest. Wolf packs are notorious for young punks constantly challenging the authority of the leader – that’s where the whole concept of an ‘alpha male’ came from. Research stuff before you post it, there’s lots of credible places to check this crap before you start posting it.

It really bugs me when someone posts something like this and says ‘True…’ – no it’s not, and your saying so doesn’t automatically endorse it to be.

And it’s lovely to see all kinds of nice sentiments being attributed to Steve Jobs, Richard Branson and the like – the truth is, they were extremely effective business leaders who didn’t always have the time to be nice and self-effacing, so a lot of this is either the reframing of history or completely untrue.

3. Job ads, asking people to respond in the comments, and actually responding in the comments

That’s actually three things but I’ll club them. To those who post job ads here, if your company is too cheap to spend $100 on a proper job listing you probably shouldn’t be working there. To those who ask for people who’re interested to respond in the comments – whom do you think you’ll get there? And to those who respond in the comments, what signal do you think you’re sending to the potential employer (not to mention your existing employer who can read what you commented on).

Post proper job ads, give people a place to respond confidentially, and respect LinkedIn’s business model and pay them the 100 bucks or so that they charge for a job posting. (No, I don’t work at LinkedIn or own shares in it – it’s the principle of the thing).

2. Writing long posts about why you quit your last job or why you’re in the new one.

I’ve seen this from pretty senior people who get plenty of PR coverage as it is. So we all know you moved jobs. If you link to that here, that’s fine – everyone in your network can read it and congratulate you.

What we don’t need is the long post on what went wrong at the old company or what’s so great about the new one – let the honeymoon wear off and if you really like it there, you can write about the work you do. We don’t need the entire exit interview reproduced here.

1. The ‘humble brag’

I absolutely detest this.

So you won an award or spoke at a seminar.

Great! More power to you.

If you got covered in some external media, provide a link by all means. Though it would be more cool to have your friends do this because they discover the link and the news.

But for the love of God or whatever else you worship, don’t write ‘humbled and proud blah blah blah…’. Here’s why:

1. You can either be humble or you can be proud

2. If you’re posting something that’s actually about how great you are then you really can’t be humble about it

3. Generally being humbled is not a good thing. It means you got your butt kicked and the arrogance knocked out of you.

OK, end of rant. I don’t think it’s going to make one iota of difference to what I see on LinkedIn but at least I can tell myself I tried. And be proud of myself for sharing my humble opinion.

D. Sriram is chief operating officer of Vpon

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