Here’s a quick question for you, Pandas: how many of you have an account on LinkedIn? With 830 million members in over 200 countries, LI is an utterly massive online professional network. Though ‘professional’ might be a bit of a misnomer. As anyone who has spent time on the network knows, things can get pretty darn ridiculous sometimes.
Posts about completely made-up situations. Posts so full to the brim with bragging that they make you gag. Posts that exaggerate the positive qualities of the author, as well as those of their company. And posts about how CEOs acted like total jerks but tried to pretend they were super deep and professional (and totally don’t have control and/or greed issues). The cringe is real. And it all ends up on the ‘The Best of LinkedIn’ Twitter page.
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Run by JR Hickey, from California, the account shows the side of LinkedIn that many would prefer would remain hidden. He gently makes fun of all the “heroes and influencers brave enough to share their stories in an effort to inspire others.” Scroll down for his best featured posts, upvote your fave ones, and tell us all about the most bizarre things you’ve stumbled upon on LI yourselves, dear Pandas.
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JR’s ‘The Best of LinkedIn’ social media project is a great archive showing how even the most seasoned professionals can feel insecure about themselves. It’s a slippery slope when you start making up stories for clicks.
Don’t even get us started on how ridiculous it is to try and motivate people while humble-bragging in between the lines. Look, nobody says that LinkedIn has to be super serious all the time (we actually rather enjoy some of the fun, quirky, and artistic posts that fly across our feeds from time to time), however, it’s downright embarrassing when industry veterans go all out and think they’re the next big ‘self-help’ guru.
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Now, that’s not to say that motivation and finding joy within and beyond the rat race aren’t important (they are!), but it all really comes down to how you try and motivate people. Copying someone else’s post, borrowing someone else’s ideas with a few small tweaks, downright faking entire experiences just so you have something to feed your followers doesn’t reflect well on you.
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It speaks less about you as a ‘leader’ and more about your insecurities and desire for attention. If you’re feeling creatively bankrupt, it’s perfectly fine to take some time off: get off social media. Take a break. Fight that burnout! It’s way better than flooding LinkedIn with trite stories and ‘inspirational’ stories that make people’s eyes roll. And yes, we might be low-key judging anyone who writes, “So true!!!” in the comments. If you genuinely enjoy a post, good for you. But like it or not, there’s just way too much pretense online. Especially on LinkedIn where you pretty much are what you say you are.
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LinkedIn does have its upsides, though. When you make an account and polish up your profile, you’re putting yourself out there for recruiters to see. You become far more visible. You can find jobs that you like way more easily. And (probably best of all) you can actually connect with professionals from all around the world.
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Need some advice on publishing a book, learning to program, or how to raise your EQ stats? Well, there are tons of people who’d be happy to help you, as long as you’re polite and genuine. Of course, there are some pros who would ignore or even look down on someone asking for advice, but hey, those are the rules of social networks, right
You’re bound to get some jerks in every community. In our experience, the vast majority of people using LinkedIn have been phenomenal and super friendly. Then again, we haven’t chatted with many folks who thrive on bragging.
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Career coach Jermaine Murray, from JupiterHR, previously told Bored Panda that ‘turbo-charging’ your LinkedIn profile can lead to greater visibility and success. In his opinion, first impressions matter. However, they might not be overly long-lasting. That means that if you make a mistake on your LI profile, it’s not the end of the world: you can recover from this.
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“You can always improve your profile and show up in a Recruiter’s future search based on the SEO algorithms on LinkedIn. Also, if someone is a good Recruiter, they wouldn’t discount someone’s profile in the future because good people make bad resumes on LinkedIn all the time,” Jermaine told us during an earlier interview.
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From the career coach’s perspective, LinkedIn is a “super powerful and useful tool for surfacing and connecting” with other people. LI can handle most of your professional needs. However, interactions elsewhere, on the net and in real-life, can also be useful for your career.
“I’ve found LinkedIn to be more effective after I’ve built rapport with people on a different platform (like Twitter) or at a networking event (pre-Covid), as it’s a great way to stay in touch,” the career expert said.
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According to Jermaine, people usually don’t give themselves enough credit for their skills. They need to be less modest about themselves and the value that they bring.
“When I have sessions with clients, the first exercise we do is a Success/Failure log where they can beat their chest a bit but also dissect and really understand that ‘failure’ because, more often than not, that Failure can actually lead to a win/success further down the line,” he shared.
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Source: boredpanda.com