Dealing with random LinkedIn invites
USA TODAY columnist Steven Petrow offers advice about digital etiquette.
Q I’m getting a number of LinkedIn invitations from people I don’t know and who aren’t even connected to other friends or colleagues. Should I accept their invitations? I know that part of the purpose of LinkedIn is to create a large network, but for some reason I feel uncomfortable being linked to complete strangers.
— Anonymous
A: That’s a great question, and it’s one I’ve had to think about myself — especially now that LinkedIn now boasts more than 347 million members worldwide. That’s a lot of people I don’t know!
At first my thinking followed yours: Accept all invitations, both from people I know as well as those from those I don’t.
The point was to create as big a network as possible to “exploit” when I needed to make professional connections. Right?
I soon discovered the downside to getting linked with people I didn’t know. Even though the whole point of the service is linking, I felt reticent to ask strangers to connect with me.
I also discovered — to my dismay — that they weren’t accepting my invitations anyway, just as I was reluctant to accept invitations from strangers. If I did connect with someone I didn’t know, I felt even more uncomfortable — you know that old saying about being judged by the company you keep?
I realized I didn’t want to be professionally associated with people I don’t know (especially when I heard that one of my connections had been fired from her job for dealing drugs in the workplace!).
So here’s what I suggest. Only accept invitations from people you’ve met, and only send invitations to those you know professionally.
However, if someone writes me a quick e-mail of introduction through the service’s “InMail” (available for a premium), I’ll take a second look and then decide.
One last point: Often, in the workplace we get Facebook friend requests from supervisors or colleagues.
Like many people I prefer to keep my professional and personal spheres separate, so I respond to those friend requests by telling them, “Connect with me on LinkedIn. I only use Facebook for personal relationships.”