How to get blocked by me on LinkedIn
I don't mind recruiters.
Recruiters sometimes contact me out of the blue. It's fair. They're straightforward and generally trying to help. I can respond with a "Thank you for the interest! I'm not looking for X position at this time but good luck!" and we both move on. They have a real product to sell - the job opening - and there's a chance I could actually get it if I were interested.
There's another type of connection request I get from strangers on LinkedIn. The ones that make me feel grateful for recruiters contacting me out of the blue. They start the same way (exposition annotated with 🚩 red flags):
Listen, I'll be the first to tell you I don't have a "stellar" background and I am definitely not "perfect" for this "business opportunity." 🚩 But oh, my stars! Passive income? Who would decline?
Then they invariably mispronounce my name on the phone. 🚩
Eventually they confess that they work for Amway, or Vector, or Avon, or Vemma, or Herbalife, or any of these. Multilevel Marketing organizations where you recruit other people to join, and then they recruit more people, and so on.
I don't need to explain why organizations like Amway, while technically legal, are terrible bets in which only a small percentage of people actually make their money back 🚩; plenty of people have done that already (even John Oliver!). As Cracked bluntly puts it, "You wind up making everyone in your life hate you." 🚩
The first time I met up with one of these people I felt deep discomfort 🚩 for 45 minutes while he explained to me how hustling twenty hours a week trying to recruit strangers and maintain his network constitutes passive income. It's like going to a job interview for a cult.
It feels wrong because it is wrong.
Maybe you have an actual business opportunity and you think my LinkedIn profile is just peachy. How can you get my attention? It's not hard to avoid looking like a scam. Just try to provide as much information as possible: actual company name, what the product actually is, what the position actually is, how you actually make money, the actual website and any relevant press releases. Make yourself Googleable.
In the case of a random recruiter, even if I'm not interested I can see where they're coming from and we both have the same understanding of what's happening. It's almost relieving to have a normal unwanted interaction. There's a real product and real opportunity. In the other case, I'm the product. 🚩
Recruiters sometimes contact me out of the blue. It's fair. They're straightforward and generally trying to help. I can respond with a "Thank you for the interest! I'm not looking for X position at this time but good luck!" and we both move on. They have a real product to sell - the job opening - and there's a chance I could actually get it if I were interested.
There's another type of connection request I get from strangers on LinkedIn. The ones that make me feel grateful for recruiters contacting me out of the blue. They start the same way (exposition annotated with 🚩 red flags):
Listen, I'll be the first to tell you I don't have a "stellar" background and I am definitely not "perfect" for this "business opportunity." 🚩 But oh, my stars! Passive income? Who would decline?
Then they invariably mispronounce my name on the phone. 🚩
Eventually they confess that they work for Amway, or Vector, or Avon, or Vemma, or Herbalife, or any of these. Multilevel Marketing organizations where you recruit other people to join, and then they recruit more people, and so on.
I don't need to explain why organizations like Amway, while technically legal, are terrible bets in which only a small percentage of people actually make their money back 🚩; plenty of people have done that already (even John Oliver!). As Cracked bluntly puts it, "You wind up making everyone in your life hate you." 🚩
The first time I met up with one of these people I felt deep discomfort 🚩 for 45 minutes while he explained to me how hustling twenty hours a week trying to recruit strangers and maintain his network constitutes passive income. It's like going to a job interview for a cult.
It feels wrong because it is wrong.
Maybe you have an actual business opportunity and you think my LinkedIn profile is just peachy. How can you get my attention? It's not hard to avoid looking like a scam. Just try to provide as much information as possible: actual company name, what the product actually is, what the position actually is, how you actually make money, the actual website and any relevant press releases. Make yourself Googleable.
In the case of a random recruiter, even if I'm not interested I can see where they're coming from and we both have the same understanding of what's happening. It's almost relieving to have a normal unwanted interaction. There's a real product and real opportunity. In the other case, I'm the product. 🚩
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