it's business time.....

I was interviewing someone today.  We reached a certain point in the process where he paused to consult his notes in a folder he'd brought with him.  As he did so, I noticed that he had a colour printed copy of my LinkedIn profile in there too, complete with the natty profile picture of me looking all suave and sophisticated in a tuxedo.

Now, clearly this makes sense on lots of levels: he got sent the names of the people interviewing him in advance and the picture will help him identify me when I come to pick him up; he can also read up on me and my job role (and by extension the area that he's hoping to become a part of) to make sure he's as prepared as he can be and armed with more than just the job description in the job advert.  I've actually also worked with him in the dim and distant past, so he might just have been looking to see if he could put a face to the name.... so, all in all, it's a pretty sensible use of a resource that's readily available and I should probably be applauding him for using his initiative.

But..... but....but..... LinkedIn has always been the crappest of the social media, hasn't it?  In fact, I would go as far as to say that it's really pretty lame.

I have a profile there, but I don't really do anything with it other than sporadically update it with the barest level of information.  They send me an email each week, and (as well as the tedious approaches from lazy recruitment consultants doing nothing more than key word searching) I have developed a deep and lasting suspicion of those people who always seem to be endorsing articles or tinkering with their profile on the site.  I'm sure it's a perfectly respectable way of maintaining a network of business contacts, or some other bullshit like that.  But really, who has the energy for that?  Is anyone really impressed by the size of your network of business contacts and those empty recommendations and endorsements that you have exchanged with people you worked with a decade ago and haven't seen since?

Surely normal people are busy getting into pointlessly impassioned debates with people they've never  actually met on Facebook.

That's a much more productive use of your time. Surely we can all agree on that.

It can't be just me who does that.  I'm not arguing with myself.