Making meaningful connections on LinkedIn

A few years ago, when I was considering a job change, I asked my friend Pat* to introduce me to someone with whom he was connected on LinkedIn. His contact, Tim, was a manager at a company where I was interested in working. Tim wasn't hiring, nor were there any open jobs at his company, but I wanted to talk to him just to see how it was to work there, what the culture was, and how my skills and background might be useful. Just your basic company research, you know.

Days passed, but I did not hear back from Pat. I wrote to him again, and still no reply. Finally, I called him. "Pat," I said, "I know you're busy, but do you think you can send a quick note to Tim to introduce me? I sent you a LinkedIn request a few days ago. It won't take very long." That's when Pat admitted, sheepishly, that he did not actually know Tim. It turned out that they had met some time ago, exchanged pleasantries and business cards, and promised to stay in touch. But life intervened, and neither could make the time to keep up the fledgling connection.

I think this is what happens with most of us. We make professional connections, invite them to LinkedIn, and go on with our lives. In hopes of future gain, we keep those connections around, but when the times comes to actually leverage those connections (usually when we start a job search), we find, just like Pat did, that they have wilted from lack of care.

I am quite as guilty as Pat and everyone else in not keeping up my professional network, but I'm making a conscious effort to get better.

For starters, I don't accept LinkedIn invitations from people I don't know, or have not worked with before. Once I got a message from a student at my alma mater asking to be added to his LinkedIn network because he had just graduated and was starting to look for work. I had to decline the request, and I felt bad doing that, but I couldn't make connections between him and other people with any confidence, because I didn't even know him. And if I can't connect two people because I don't even know one of them, then the whole purpose of networking is defeated.

The other thing I have started to do – and this will sound heretical, especially in this age of hyper connectedness – is to remove connections from LinkedIn. Yes, it's extreme, but look at it this way. Relationships, whether personal or professional, need nurture. If I haven't been able to nurture a relationship (undoubtedly due to my own failings), and have allowed it to wither, then it seems... shameful in a way to approach the other person for an introduction or a recommendation or a referral. There's a living, breathing, feeling human being at the other end of that relationship, and they are not there only to serve as doormen to a new job. It's best to acknowledge the end of that relationship and move on. (On occasion, I have also tried to revive a moribund relationship, but it hasn't always been fruitful. The effort has to be mutual and sustained for the connection to become strong enough to be beneficial to both.)

Relationships are fragile, especially professional ones, and making them meaningful needs care.

* Names have been changed for privacy.