A diary based on my latest attempts to get a job; this time in Munich. I'm an engineering graduate (and chartered engineer) with more than 10 years' experience in IT. Over five of these years have been spent in team leading and project management roles both in the UK and abroad.

Sunday, November 20, 2005

More LinkedIn activity

Look, I'm going to be writing quite a bit about this and openBC so you'd just better get use to it.

LinkedIn now allows you to set a flag saying you're happy to be contacted by anyone. Before they advised people not to be "connection sluts" but they were losing the battle.

Being the good little networker I set the flag. However, I don't really want to be contacted by everyone.

Already I'm finding that the worth of connection sluts is low. If I want to connect to someone I won't go via them anyway. Well, they don't know me and have nothing in common.

But there will be some people who don't know me but it would be beneficial for us to connect. Maybe we have a similar regional (e.g. Nordics, Germany) or business interests. So, I've altered my profile's connection settings to say:

"I welcome contacts, especially where there may be mutual benefit or where I can give assistance, even if I don't know you. But if you do wish to contact me please send a personalised message."

Thought that was better than saying:

"Connection sluts - go away!

People who can offer me a job in a cool part of the world - connect now!"


Asking for a personalised message helps me for another reason. I'm finding people contacting me with what is probably a template message. Apparently we did work for the same company at some time. It's just that I have a very haphazard memory and may have forgotten them.

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