Facebook Vs. LinkedIn. Should behaviors be different?
I’m an intensely private person. It takes major effort for me to put myself out there. Perhaps it was my upbringing. Growing up my parents taught me to be humble and self-deprecating. Good things will come to those who put their head down, work their butts off. Growing up my father would tell me how in Japan schools, the figurative nail that stood out got hammered in.
You can avoid social networks, like facebook, instagram or even match.com, if you so choose but the allure is so tempting, given that humans are social beings. So you probably have at least a facebook page or a match profile, even if you never use it.
It’s not unusual to send friend requests to people you know and join interest groups that appeal to you. You might even strike up a conversation with a stranger and you end up “friending” them. Naturally there is the seedier side of the online society that parallels the flesh and bone and that is unsolicited friend requests. More often than not, it is a scam, a troll, a bot or worse. Usually they are easy to identify and you delete the friend request and if they persist you can block them and you don’t give it a second thought.
LinkedIn is a completely different animal in my view. Whereas with platforms like Facebook, where you have the common interest of the topic or the request comes from someone with a mutual friend, with a professional networking platform like LinkedIn the whole purpose is to meet other professionals. The purpose is to put yourself out there as a professional, representing your industry, your company and yourself. It’s called “networking” and its all about business, opportunity and how we all can help each other.
GIven that I saw 40 a few years ago, I remember when “networking” meant going to a happy hour sponsored by a business, with a stack of your business cards in your left hand, freeing your right hand for shaking someone’s hand. Usually with introverts like me, you’d do one or two 12 ounce curls first, which was called liquid courage. Then you would work the room with the goal in mind to meet as many people as possible.
Now translate that to the LinkedIn platform, one might wager that the “networking” would follow that paradigm so making as many connections as possible is desirable. After all, the bigger your network, the more opportunity present themselves. Given what’s going on in the world, and in particular the USA, many people have been let go and LinkedIn has become the defacto “bar” for jobseekers to network and put themselves out there.
So imagine you’ve had your two 12 ounce curls and your ready to work the room with a stack of your business cards in one hand and you walk up to the first person and introduce yourself (thats sending them a connection request). That person looks you up and down, turns their back and walks away without a word. What is your reaction?
This happens on LinkedIn with terrifying frequency. And for job seekers already freaked out by their circumstance (looking for a job in recession and a pandemic and a confluence of unprecedented natural disasters), it can have devastating consequences.
For me it brings up feelings of rejection when I was the last kid picked in dodgeball in grade school.
How does it make you feel?
