Employers should not think they are God’s gift to people

Got a message through LinkedIn today.
“Hello Tania,
I just saw your profile on Linkedin. We specialize in SR&ED. Please send me your resume should we have a need for a Technical Writer. Your enthusiasm jumps off the page.”

This is really priceless. The author of the message did not even bother to say what kind of company they are, what are they looking for, what kind of a position they have, etc. (Yes, I could have looked them up, perfectly well, on LinkedIn or wherever, but if someone wants something from someone else and is trying to make the acquaintance, they should introduce themselves, just to be polite.)

They did not bother to ask me whether I am looking for anything right now, whether I WANT to work for them or not. They just condescended to put me on the list and keep me on file – and it looks like they were 150% sure that I would rush, head over heels, to send them my resume (losing my slippers on the way, as we say in Russian). I don’t think it is THAT bad in the job market that people would react to such “compelling” invitations; at least, in the job market for SR&ED writers. I see SR&ED job posts daily on Twitter. Am I missing something?

P.S. And the moral of that is: if I ever start looking for another position, I probably would not consider working for the company in question. See how much you can achieve for your company’s image with a short 2-line note?

Crappy policy of LinkedIn

Today I wanted to invite someone to contact on LinkedIn and got the requirement to enter their e-mail address, followed by this warning:

“Your account has been restricted because a significant number of LinkedIn users whom you have invited to your network have indicated that they don’t know you. Use of LinkedIn is subject to the terms of our User Agreement, which you have violated. An example of the violation includes breach of Section 11, LinkedIn User DOs & DON’Ts.”

It says further that I can remove this restriction by acknowledging the policy, but if they “find me in violation” again, they may suspend my account altogether. I counted the “Don’t know” responses to my invitations and found there are exactly 10 of them. What the hell? I have had a LinkedIn account for, probably, 5 years or more, and I have over 500 contacts. In all these years, during my interactions with all these numbers of people just 10 of them said they did not know me. I would say I am a paragon of prudency and trustworthiness.

By the way, it is not true that these people did not know me: I always use only the business cards people give me (their own business cards, that is), and only after talking to them at a conference or something like that. In all these cases where the people said they did not know me, what they really meant was that they did not know me well enough and preferred not to connect. LinkedIn, however, does not distinguish between this case and the case when a complete stranger approaches you after telling LinkedIn he’s your friend. As God is my witness, I receive a lot of this crap, especially from recruiters, and this definitely must be stopped. I understand the need for such policy and I am all for it. But there is an obvious difference between approaching a complete stranger under false pretenses and trying to connect to someone you met at a conference and exchanged business cards with.

Also, I entered those e-mails when I sent out the invitations (since I had the business cards), so I don’t really see how the requirement to enter emails would prevent me from sending those invitations in the first place. Therefore, the policy is not only insulting but useless.

And the moral of that is… LinkedIn’s usability, that was always great, started, sadly, to leave much to be desired. I am not going to “remove the restriction” because the way they phrase it, it is an insulting lie. Agreeing to what they say basically equals admitting that I was trying to deceive people to get in contact with them, and agreeing to LinkedIn removing my account altogether on the slightest pretext. For example, if somebody else says “don’t know her” instead of “don’t know her well enough” (and the latter option just is not there when you accept or reject an invitation).

LinkedIn events application is horrible

LinkedIn events application is horrible.

1. There is no sorting whatsoever. You cannot sort the events by dates so the closest or the latest are on top. You have to browse the entire list every time to see if there is anything new – seriously, who has patience to do it?

2. There is no “Show me only the events in my area” option. You can limit the list to, say, November and December and your area, but you have to do it manually every time you want to browse events. Why would I want to see on my home page the events that will take place in May 2009 in India, when it is still November 2008 and I am in Toronto, Canada?

3. The past events are not removed. E.g. today’s the 14th, but I still see a Nov.11th event on my home page. This is ridiculous beyond belief.

4. I cannot specify a certain date range and see the events within that date.

5. I have to press the “Not Attending” button TWICE to make it really do something.

6. If I want to look inside the event description and go back to the events browsing, I have no other choice but to return to the very beginning of the list and browse again to wherever I was (8th page maybe, so I have to memorize where I was before going and looking at the event; opening this event in a new page isn’t working).

7. There is no option for seeing/selecting events posted by my contacts.

8. LinkedIn allows anyone – yes, your eyes do not deceive you, that’s ANYONE – to update events posted by anyone else.

Summary: if I released to the public something THIS half-baked, I’d have died of shame. It looks especially lame compared to the seamless integration of Meetup with Google calendar and the smooth event handling done by Facebook. Yes, and have I mentioned that LinkedIn does not offer any integration whatsoever?

My social networking (for business and pleasure)

I talked to my SEB program advisor the other day and mentioned that I try to attend one networking event a week, and not more than that (otherwise, I would have no time for the actual work). She was pleasantly surprised that I manage to find so many networking events while some other people just have no idea where to go and how to start. In fact, once you have a social network established and use the proper tools, the information starts coming from all directions.

All the further stuff is trivial for a digiterati, so, if you heard of Twitter or know what a RSS is, don’t bother to read on. However, today I got another reminder of the digital gap: a classmate in YorkU proudly mentioned she was going to a workshop where they will teach her to use comments in Microsoft Word and other advanced stuff. So, I suppose, these notes could be of use to someone.