Someone wrote a letter that asked, in effect, why, when someone asks a question, the replies are either platitudes or brief.
My response was to tell the questioner to be thankful for any kind of response since he was probably connected to many people with whom he had no relationship and that these people were taking time out of busy lives to help him.
The question has caused me to correct a mis-impression you probably have about the value of your LinkedIn, Facebook, Plaxo, myspace, Ning and other networks.
When LinkedIn was formed, it had the idea that you should only connect with your friends and business associates.
They still encourage the same thing but the members have a different idea; they believe you should try to connect with anyone who might be able to help them in some way at any time in the future.
The result is that we are all connected to people with whom we have no real relationship.
As of today, I have 15,305 direct connections that connect me to many millions of people worldwide. As recruiters go, that’s pretty good but not extraordinary.
Generally, I do not request connections. Instead people reach out to me and have done so since I joined LinkedIn many years ago.
How many of these people do you think would be willing to help me? How many of your connections do you think would actually help you get a good connection with their employer or with someone that they really knew?
Probably very few.
© The Big Game Hunter, Inc. Asheville, NC 2008, 2016
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Do you really think employers are trying to help you? You already know you can’t trust recruiters—they tell as they think you need to know to take the job they after representing so they collect their payday.
Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter has been a career coach and recruiter for what seems like one hundred years.
JobSearchCoachingHQ.com is there to change that with great advice for job hunters—videos, my books and guides to job hunting, podcasts, articles, PLUS a community for you to ask questions of PLUS the ability to ask me questions where I function as your ally with no conflict of interest answering your questions.