Thanks for the good wishes, but...

To everyone who congratulated me on my new role as "Vice President | Regional Director" at "CPG, Computer Software," you have my sincere thanks and equally sincere apologies.

This is a fake job distributed by LinkedIn to my connections in error.

On Tuesday I led a webinar on using LinkedIn. As I prefer demonstrating with real-life actions, I often use my profile to create test content which I then immediately delete. Typically my default setting is "No, don't share profile edits", but evidently during a prior training session I had left it on. During the Q&A at the end of my session I quickly created a new current role, noticing too late the "Yes, please share!" switch was turned on. I shrieked in silence and quickly prayed that my fast deletion would be enough to prevent LinkedIn from sharing. Wishful thinking.

Shortly after 11 pm ET the same day, the congratulatory notes started streaming in from around the world. To make matters worse, I was at an offsite day-to-night event Wednesday, so other than throwing up a quick damage control response to the comment thread, I was unable to address the situation as I am now.

Not one to miss a coaching opportunity, here is what I learned from this experience:

1. Always double check your settings.

I assumed that my update settings were turned off. We all know what they say about the word assume. A corollary to that is not to rush. Good reminder to never let technology know when you're in a hurry.

2. Hard to stop LinkedIn's distribution engine once you say "go".

I deleted the test role within a minute. In hindsight, if I had turned off my notifications tab before deleting, that might have stopped LinkedIn from sharing. Coincidentally, one of the webinar attendees had asked how long it takes LinkedIn to share profile updates. I'd say pretty darn fast, my friend.

3. Sharing profile updates on LinkedIn does increase your reach.

I don't know how many of my connections were emailed about my "new job", but my profile views are up 385%+ this week and my damage control comment has received 433 views in 24 hours...mostly, but not entirely (!) from my first degree connections. Perhaps LinkedIn gave me an above-average boost because sharing a profile update is exceedingly rare for me to do, but can't say for sure.

3a. Not everyone sees the same thing.

One of the big mysteries is LinkedIn's algorithm for sharing content. This article provides insight into the algorithm for newsfeed content distribution. When you share a profile update, the message directs that "if enabled, your network may [emphasis mine] see this change." While I have no idea if all my connections saw the notice (I will not be emailing to ask them, ha), I get the sense that some received a marquee notice, while for others my news was buried among other update notices. I have no idea who gets what and why; if you figure this out, please let me know.

3b. Not everyone receives it at the same time.

Update: October 31, 2017: A friend just forwarded me the announcement he received today - one week later!! Will this ever end???

Update: November 1, 2017: My mom just asked me if this was a joke.

4. I am grateful to be part of such a supportive community.

The best part of this experience has been the wonderful outpouring of supportive (and some puzzled) messages, emails, texts and likes I've received. Sending big hugs to:

Abdul, Abe, Alan, Alex, Amir, Andrew, Andrew, Anita, Aynsley, Ben, Beth, Blair, Branka, Brooke, Bill, Calvin, Carolyn, Carrie, Charlotte, Colin, Dan, Daniel, Darryl, David, David, David, Deborah, Derrick, Dib, Dimah, Doug, Edwin, Emad, Eric, Eric, Erika, Ettore, Evelina, Evelyn, Frances, Froots, Gen, Geoff, Gil, Gord, Gurprasad, Hala, Helen, Hersh, Isaac, Jacqueline, Jeff, Jeff, Jeremy, Jerry, Jessy, Jo, Joachim, Joanna, Jodi, John, Jon, Judith, Julia, Karen, Keith, Kim, Kim, Kim, Kristina, Lally, Lars, Laura, Leslie, Lisa, Lisa, Lizah, Marcel, Mark, Matt, Mike, Marion, Mom, Moshe, Nancy, Nancy, Oscar, Oscar, Patricia, Paul, Paul, Rene, Rob, Rob, Ron, Sandra, Sarasija, Saul, Sebby, Shane, Sharon, Shelley, Sherry, SiuYin, Stephen, Steve, Soomer, Susan, Tara, Tracey, Tracie, Val, Vandana, Walter, Zabeen, Zeina.

THANK YOU!