The thing that bugs me most about LinkedIn

So every so often, someone I used to work with or went to school with will find my name on LinkedIn and ask to add him/herself to my connections. And when that happens, I have a tendency to look up people I’ve known or worked with in the past, out of curiosity. Sometimes I find people I want to talk to, and sometimes I find very… creative descriptions of what someone I’ve worked with in the past claims to have done.

I won’t get into the reliability problems with inherent in social networks, but in one particular case recently, I came across the profile of someone I worked with sometime during my many, many years in the workforce. Someone I’m not about to identify. Sorry. And if you happen to know me, don’t ask – I won’t confirm or deny anything. (N.B. I’ve been working on-and-off since I was about 18, and have probably worked with hundreds of people by now in many places not listed in my own profile, so if you think this is about you, it’s probably not. The only hint I’ll give is that it is not someone I worked with in my 3-week career at Hardee’s )

Anyhow, the unnamed person in question was a master bullshitter, and, more importantly, monarch of useless verbosity, with special emphasis on getting the semantics of the GRE words dropped into every sentence irritatingly wrong. By inserting as much speech as possible into any given situation, this colleague was able to effectively avoid getting much of anything done or having to actually understand the problems that needed to be solved. The icing on the cake is that this person was able to make other people feel like they were the ones with deficiencies in understanding. (The Peter principle – on steroids…) And the schmoozing? My God, the schmoozing. Ugh.

Anyhow, LinkedIn lets you write your own summary of your career, and allows acquaintances who are in your network of connections to write recommendations for you. So I came across this person’s profile, and was highly amused both by the summary of his/her career on the page and the recommendations left by other colleagues. If I were a recruiter, I’d think… wow, this person would be a great asset!

On the other hand, if I were someone who’d worked with this person, I’d just laugh. A lot. And if I were drinking something at the time, it would probably come out of my nose. But that’s just me. And then I’d start drinking something stronger, because people do actually buy this B.S. in industry…

And it got me thinking… not that this would ever work, and it would be used terribly maliciously, but… since, on a social networking site, one can give recommendations, one should also be able to give criticisms/warnings. Surely both pieces of information are equally valuable to an employer, and when it comes down to it, equally reliable when taken from an unknown person off of a social networking site. Unless you happen to know the recommender directly, in most situations, it is far too much legwork to trace the chain of connections with the recommender back to someone you can trust, so there’s really no reason to believe/disbelieve what the recommender has to say, unless he or she has an incredible reputation. There has to be some external verification of trust, and since that usually is not going to be available, a recommendation for someone is no more valid than a recommendation against him or her.

Again, I know why it wouldn’t work, but it’s easy enough to pull 5 guys you work with in and decide you’re all going to exchange glowing recommendations, so I don’t really think that works either.

It’s all silly, when it comes down to it. And mostly meaningless, most of the time.