Just wondering what the correct thing to do is. (Asking for my daughter.) I think it makes sense to only connect to people on LinkedIn you have actually met (which might include people you have interviewed with - even if you didn’t get the job.)
Since turning on “let recruiters know I might be interested”, she has gotten lots of “are you interested in a job at my company” messages from recruiters. Which is what I expected. She has also gotten connect requests from recruiters at lots of companies. She has been ignoring those, as she has never met these people and is not interested in the companies they work for.
I understand that LinkedIn has become a powerful tool in the job search (companies posting jobs on LinkedIn first or no place else.) But I am still suspicious of connecting to strangers on the internet.
Personally, I only connect with people I know. I’m sure some people believe in connecting with as many people as possible; this can help if you use LinkedIn as a form of professional social media, e.g. making a lot of posts in order to reach a wide audience and build up a professional reputation.
At the end of the day it’s really about what she wants to get out of LinkedIn. I use it as a way to stay in touch with people I’ve met or worked with, and to reach out to them if I’m applying for a job at their companies. If I job-hopped a lot, or was inclined to post public articles/thoughts in order to build a reputation, then I’d try to connect with more people.
My current college student connects with younger alums from his school who are working in fields of interest, these are generally not people he has met “in real life.” My older one, for whom Linked in was really only starting to become a thing during his early college years, generally only had his own college peers as connections, until it was time to start looking for a job, and then he started connecting with professionals working in his field of interest.
For younger people, I think one of the values of linked in is to identify alums who may be available for informational interviews/networking in real life. From that perspective, connecting with people they haven’t met already is helpful and appropriate. However, for me, someone well established in my work, I do not connect, or accept connections, from people I don’t actually know.
I only connect with people I know. But it can be a pretty casual connection — if I think they know me well enough to recognize me when they get the invite, that is good enough! Remind her to connect with other students (including older ones), profs, anyone from an internship or part time job, even parents of friends if they work in a related area. You never know where people will end up in the future (just figured out this week that one of my close HS friends is now president of a prominent national magazine company - I knew he worked for them, but didn’t realize he had risen to that level).
I connect with people that I have met or people that I have some sort of connection with (such as having worked for the same company) even though I haven’t met them. I don’t connect with headhunters unless I have actually previously dealt with them in hiring or a job search.
I only connect with people or vendors I have worked with or am good enough friends and are active in the business world and that understand what I do for a living, I don’t treat LinkedIn like “facebook-lite”. I am connected to recruiters who I have worked with in the past. I have not and won’t ask for endorsements or whatever they call the comments. Many recruiters do use LinkedIn so I tell the kids to keep their profiles up to date and keep open to recruiters.
I connect with most people who request for it. I don’t usually connect with other people. I have endorsement and recommendations. If you are not connected with someone you can’t send a message to them (or you are limited to number of messages). I have received good job prospects through linkedin.
I am like momofthreeboys. I only connect with people I have worked with, or people I know professionally. I won’t deny a request from a friend but if I haven’t worked with someone even in a volunteer setting, I don’t feel like I can serve as a useful reference apart from a character reference. And for far away old high school friends that I’ve been out of touch with for years who work in an entirely different industry? Sometimes I ignore those requests. I typically do not connect with recruiters. I never connect with anyone I don’t know unless there is a compelling reason that they have articulated.
I only connect with people I’ve met. I not-infrequently get invitations to connect from people I don’t know, and respond that “I only connect with people I know; can you remind me how we’ve met?” Then I never hear back from them.
I have no interest in helping someone else get huge numbers of connections.