Estimated reading time: 3 minutes

It's Only Common Sense: I Just Had to Write This One

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I know I promised I would give you tips for walking the IPC APEX EXPO this year (just walking it, not exhibiting) and I will do it next week, okay? But this LinkedIn thing came up this week and it was just too damn good to pass up. I just can’t help myself.

I’m sure many of you saw this either on the news via social media. If you have, I’m sure you’ve got your own opinion about it. But since this is my column, here's mine.

When a 20-something tried to connect with a more experienced woman on LinkedIn, here is the answer she got:

We have never met. We have never worked together. You are quite young and apparently green on how business connections work with senior professionals. Apparently you have heard that I produce a Job Bank, and decided that it would be stunningly helpful for your career prospects if I shared my 960+ Linkedin connections with you--a total stranger who has nothing to offer me.

Your invite to connect is inappropriate, beneficial only to you and tacky. Wow, I cannot wait to let every 26-year-old jobseeker mine my top tier marketing connections to help them land a job.

I love the sense of entitlement in your generation. And therefore I enjoy denying your invite and giving you the dreaded “I Don’t Know %#$% because it’s the truth.

Oh, and about your request to actually receive my Job Bank along with 7,300 other subscribers to my service? That’s denied too.

I suggest you join the other Job Bank in town…Oh wait there isn’t one.

You’re welcome for your humility lesson for the year. Don’t ever reach out to senior practitioners again and assume their carefully curated list of connections is available to you just because you want to build your network.

Don’t ever write me again

I  had hoped this would turn out to be a hoax, but it's not. I hope the young job-seeker is the next Mark Zuckerberg who will be able buy and sell this "senior practitioner" job bank operator in the future. Or maybe she'll turn out to be the next Steve Jobs or Bill Gates. Oh wait, maybe she is just a good kid like one of our sons or daughters, trying to find a way to kick-start a career and pay off college loans. Or maybe she's someone who was just respectfully reaching out to someone more experienced and knowledgeable--someone who would be willing to extend a hand of kindness and share a little bit of good advice or word of encouragement.

As a “senior practitioner” myself, I'm always open to helping any young person who has the initiative to reach out to me--it's the right way to do things in our society. It’s what civilized people do.

But, then again, this lady doesn’t sound like she was ever close to any mentor, or to anyone for that matter.

By the way, what kind of job bank operator doesn’t want to attract young people, recent college grads? This woman has 7,300 job bank subscribers and doesn’t want any 20-somethings? What is this job bank for? Greeters at Walmart?  

You and I know that most industries are dying to have good, young people join their ranks. Hell, if a 26-year-old reached out to me looking for advice about entering our industry, I’d be all over it doing everything I could to encourage that kid to come on in and lower the average age a bit! Heaven knows we need it.

Oh, and another thing, the name of the service is LinkedIn, like people linking up, right? It’s designed explicitly for people to connect with other people. That’s what it’s for! That’s why people sign up to LinkedIn in the first place! If you have a problem with that maybe you should get off the site!

One more thing: My friend and LinkedIn master Bruce Johnston told me he that this lady’s Facebook page and Twitter account have gone dark since her denial went public. I guess things aren’t going that well for her these days. Now, maybe she’ll want to connect with the 26-year-old user? Ya think? It’s only common sense.