Why connect on linkedin

There are also some good reasons to connect. For more on this, see our Frugal Guidance 2 series on managing a stealth job search, starting with Confidential Job Search In some corporations supervisors are discouraged from giving recommendations to current employees.

If your boss gives you a good recommendation on LinkedIn or elsewhere and you are later fired for insubordination or not meeting work standards, that recommendation might give you ammunition for legal action.

After you leave in good standing, some businesses will only give a neutral recommendation. See what your corporate policy is on supervisors connecting with staff on LinkedIn and learn what their policy is on recommendations.

If they have restrictive policies on these things, it may make more sense NOT to connect with your boss, even if job hunting is not on the horizon. Not necessarily.

If your office situation is not toxic, if your manager is supportive of building your career, or if you are new in your career, there are some good reasons to connect with your work colleagues:. No, not people who act fake, but accounts on LinkedIn who are not connected to the people they purport to be.

LinkedIn security is better than on some other social media, but LinkedIn still has a problem with fake accounts. That is a good question! All the major social media sites have fake accounts. On LinkedIn, they may simply want to grab user information — email addresses and other contact info. Then they sell or rent your info. Many fake accounts connect with other fake accounts, and real users might be approached to buy connections, or endorsements, or members for their groups.

All they are really buying are fake connections, fake endorsements, and fake members. More seriously, though, with the info on your LinkedIn profile, it could be easier to steal your identity, or send messages to all your connections under your name.

With Russian hackers in the news these days, it makes sense to be a bit fussy with your connections. There is no one method, but many fake accounts can be found by just being a little bit suspicious but not paranoid. That would be a drastic solution to the problem, and could negatively affect your networking goals. Better is to simply click on the name of the person sending you an invitation to view their profile. There might be compelling reasons to connect, or at least send a message back.

There may also be good reasons there to NOT connect, too. Or, send them a message back asking why they want to connect. It might be a good idea to send a polite note back, saying no thanks. Absolutely not! Any one of those conditions might be from somebody who is a legitimate LinkedIn user and a potential, useful contact.

But if more than one of those conditions exist, be mildly suspicious, check their profile, and see if they will engage in a conversation before you connect. Use logic. If you see a profile from a woman from, say, the United Arab Emirates with an Arabic sounding name, and her photo shows her to be a gorgeous, blonde-haired, blue-eyed woman with Nordic features, does that make sense?

This is not to say there are no beautiful blondes in the UAE, but what are the chances of one sending a LinkedIn invitation to you out of the blue? Or to me? Nor should you be afraid to connect with people for whom English is obviously not their first language. In fact, in the name of world harmony, I encourage it.

Also, it is important for any networker to pay it forward and help others who might legitimately not know how to fill out a profile, or speak English properly, or just need some help with networking. You can always disconnect. Trust your instincts. I have heard from several veteran LinkedIn users that they are now much fussier about which invitations they accept than they used to be.

Others remain quite active. Even better, be pro-active. If they decline, fine. Move on. Then, get beyond invitations and start connecting, writing, helping, building karma, and letting others know what your unique, fascinating story is. Do you agree or disagree with these suggestions? Do you have other Do Not Connect rules? Please share in the comments. Photo altered in Photoshop and Topaz Labs Glow by the author.

Photo altered in Photoshop and Topaz Labs Adjust by the author. This article was originally written and posted in It was updated in March, 16, I have no plans to take another job at my current organization.

Any comments on this? Wish I saw this article when it was first published. I admit that I was suckered into connecting with a number of recruiters over the years given their connections with executives at companies that I have wanted jobs with for as long as I can remember. To make matters worse, I saw that their firms were actively filling positions for them. To me, any recruiter that proposes this should be immediately banned from staffing for life because they are little more than con artists.

I would like to have permission to curate this article — please let me know if that would be okay? As for permission to curate, it depends on what you mean. Thank you. If you mean you want to copy it entirely and post elsewhere, I would prefer you NOT do that. I know this, as he made a comment when I dropped my son off for his weekend. Thank you, kindly. Take what helps and ignore the rest. The entire purpose of LinkedIn, is to promote yourself, including your career, to the public. You need to be pro-active in other areas.

Certainly they need to know if they are insisting you update your credentials online. However, what you post online on your personal accounts, whether LinkedIn or other media, is for YOU to decide.

If you need to temporarily ease off of promoting your current work, tell them you are uncomfortable promoting that online at this time because of your history. You need to be in charge of your LinkedIn account, not your employer. Google-searchable profile. But remember, nothing asserts yourself better than success.

A positive approach is to promote your new job, build a good network of supporters, and promote yourself in groups and elsewhere. Maybe not today, but soon. From your description, it sounds like you need good legal counsel and a cease and desist order. If your ex is a smart attorney, then you need an even smarter, experienced attorney. You also need to continue to develop a support network, whether at work or counseling, family and friends, or legal assistance.

First, if you are or you might in the future be looking for a job while still employed, you definitely do NOT want to have any HR people as LinkedIn Connections, because they might notice the minute you start looking for work. They probably know the tell-tale signs.

However, if you are affected by company layoffs and you are expected to be looking for work, ask HR what kind of recommendation they could give you on LinkedIn or whether or not they can give references other than your dates of employment. It was a convenient service to use and having long worked while traveling globally, made it easy to keep track of and exchange ideas with a scattered group.

I agree with the author in going with your instinct. If unsure ask them why they want to connect. My current dilemma is our HR head is wanting to connect with me and a boatload of my colleagues which leaves me undecided but with strong negative feelings. A month ago during an internal meeting the subject that HR watches our social media was shared and I am fine with that in principle.

Unfortunately I am failing to see the benefits of being connected to my company HR. I have absolutely no desire to leave but I want my right to speak to those whom I choose while not being shadowed by my company. Am I off base here? Being monitored on LinkedIn by your managers or HR is probably not a good thing and brings up images of Big Brother in the corporate setting.

On the other hand, if you want LinkedIn recommendations from your manager, you need to be connected. Likewise, if you want to see who your manager is connected to and connect with them , you also need to be connected. I see no particular advantage to connecting with your HR manager unless you also happen to be HR.

If you are getting requests to connect from both at the same time, that seems a bit of a warning flag to me. You said it in your first sentence Conrad.

The ability to connect with PAST work colleagues. I would not let my employer be in my Linked In network if I were in your position. It is hard enough to get good work connections without complicating them with family drama. If the person does not have a professional profile that is consistent with my field of endeavor and has little or no real appreciation for the work I do there is no reason to accept or invite my family to participate in my professional network. I accept invitations from most working, positive family relations who understand the purpose if the network.

It is counter productive. It is not Facebook, email or an invitation to a party. It helps keep you on the pulse of what is in demand and typical salary ranges. It is my account and I decide who is in and out. I started reading this article with a great interest. Is this English? And a typo. You see and interact with these people at work and can easily use them as a resource. To connect with them on linkedin only opens a can of worms giving co workers access to your resources and comments and interactions with them….

Thanks for your comments. Obviously, it depends on your coworkers. If they can give you good recommendations and endorsements, and help you connect with others in your field, connect.

But your point is well taken, and there may be good reasons for wanting to leave that workplace. I share your pet peeve of strangers who send the canned LinkedIn invitation. Also, my own experience has been that people who hide their LinkedIn connections tend to be narcissistic personalities. I am curious about adding family. If your family member is in a field not at all related to yours, that is not interesting to you and maybe even contradictory to what you believe, would you still want to add them?

Mostly, I worry potential connections will see this person in my network and immediately make an assumption that I am of a similar opinion. Well, it depends on the family. And practically all LinkedIn members came from families — with all the problems that come with them.

So most will not assume that just because you share a name you share all the same attitudes. You have to decide whether monitoring what they say behind your back on Facebook is beneficial or not. And if they actively try to defame you on LinkedIn, document it and have LinkedIn customer service kick them off. For example, I have two younger cousins from the maternal side who added me as a reliable contact.

And on the other hand, I have two older cousins from the paternal side who are well-established in their careers and I am happy to showcase them as part of my network. Like my younger cousins looking up to me, I look up to my older cousins if I have any stumping questions. Finally, there is my spouse. Plus my spouse is my biggest mentor in life and has very healthy network with connections significant to sectors involved.

So it makes sense for me to add aforementioned members. Mixed in with the rest of the cozy but quality people in my network, I am unsure if anyone noticed familial ties in my list. I always find it preposterous that you should only connect with people you already know. Your colleagues are much less useful to you on Linkedin than they are during the day at work.

And as for your family, you would be much more comfortable having conversations with them in person or over the phone. Like, Comment, Share. If you find any shared info helpful, do click Like and even leave a comment. If you find a link interesting, share it to your connections with your own comment about why you want to share it. Click Like when LinkedIn notifies you of events such as friends getting new jobs or celebrating work anniversaries.

Showing support leads to your connections supporting you back and improving the level of connection between you. LinkedIn will give you opportunities to endorse your connections for their listed skills. Take a few minutes to go through and endorse the ones you can truly speak to.

Be honest — if you know a connection is actually good at something or you have seen them demonstrate a specific skill, then endorse away. Some of them may take the time to endorse you for some skills which helps build up your profile for professional purposes.

Join Groups. This is your chance to connect with people with similar interests. If you want to search for certain types of groups, go to the dropdown menu to the left of the search bar at the top and select Groups. Put in search terms for the types of groups you are interested in. After you join a group, be sure to participate and get to know people.

Like and comment on 3 posts by 3 different people this week and respond back if they comment. Find links to 2 helpful articles this week and share them on LinkedIn with your own commentary on why they are helpful. Search for groups that you have an interest in and join 2 of them. Thank you for being here for Day 28 of 31 Days of Connection! Are you already on LinkedIn? If so, have you been using to connect with people or just leaving it static?

What keeps you from using it more often? Let me know in the comments! See you again for Day 29!