LinkedIn Seems To Be Catering These Days To ... The Lazy

And, I might add, it seems to be working very well. O.k., I’m going to show what a whiner I am but, before I do that, there are actually a lot of things that I like that LinkedIn has been doing over the past year …

While many were bemoaning the loss of the automatic Twitter connection … I was doing cartwheels.
I like the new look although a month ago I asked for the new profile, they got back with me maybe 3 weeks ago and asked if I was still ready, and I still don’t have it.
The notifications are awesome!
Their apps for IOS and Android, while not perfect, are downright beautiful and LinkedIn used to have the absolute worst apps of any of the major players.

That all being said …

Please stop suggesting my name and encouraging people to connect to me who might be a friend of a friend’s sixth cousin twice removed from their step grandparents!! It is getting old, annoying, and it smacks in the face of what LinkedIn was supposed to be in the first place … a place to connect with those who you know or who you have a valid reason to connect to. 99% of these lazy people will never write a personalized invitation to connect and I won’t connect to them without some valid reason to do so. I actually take pity on them and just “ignore” rather than “I don’t know” because, and I will bet you even money that they don’t even know this but, if you get enough IDK’s, LinkedIn is going to suspend your account. Hell, LinkedIn is part and partial to this train wreck and then they punish those who buy their tickets to climb on board!?

The new endorsement feature looks great on paper but, once again, LinkedIn caters to the lazy by giving them an avenue to “like” you without going to the trouble of writing a nice recommendation. Better yet, they shove this “one-click game” down your throat every time you go to the site! I have people endorsing me that barely even know me and LinkedIn wants me to endorse people that I hardly know. Better yet, I can’t believe that some of the skills LinkedIn wants me to endorse are even linked to that person. Where is the value in that? On top of that, I am encouraged to add skills suitable for endorsement, regardless people will generally click the skill with the most previous endorsements (because they don’t know me or my skills anyway), and this whole crazy dance ends up skewing downward the totals on the skills that I really wanted to be endorsed for to begin with. Whatever algorithms LinkedIn is using to make suggestions is flawed.

I used to love LinkedIn because it was different and not some Facebook business wannabe. Don’t get me wrong. LinkedIn is still a great business platform! Part of me just wishes that they might go back to their core values because many of those were the elements that made it indispensable in the first place.

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Craig M. Jamieson

Managing Member at Adaptive Business Services

Craig M. Jamieson is a lifelong B2B salesperson, manager, owner, and a networking enthusiast. Adaptive Business Services provides solutions related to the sales professional. We are a Nimble CRM Solution Partner. Craig also conducts training and workshops primarily in social selling and communication skills. Craig is also the author of "The Small Business' Guide to Social CRM", now available on Amazon!