Let’s not connect, really

This post originally appeared on medium.com/@kannarkk before I consolidated my writing here.

Often, I receive some form of the below LinkedIn connection request:

And I sigh! A loud sigh or a deep frown, many a time.

With no offense meant to the person who sent this connection request, too often, I find requests to be on similar lines —

1. absolutely zero mention of the company name.
   Um, where is this job?
2. no mention of position.
   If you are looking for an architect as mentioned in your profile, I am definitely not the right person. If you are hiring for multiple positions, let me know accordingly. Leaving me hanging on a inkling of a unknown position in an unknown company makes me think — Are you CIA?
3. outright asking for my number.
   I don’t know you, nor do I know anything about me. You don’t get my number. Why would I do that?
4. great compensation.
   I haven’t mentioned my current salary anywhere. You may find an estimate using glassdoor perhaps. But how do you know the compensation you mention from an unknown company for an unknown position is great, on the basis of a rough estimate of my salary?
5. connection != mail
   If you want to discuss open positions, my mail id is public. Contact me as such. A LinkedIn connection request isn’t a place to discuss that. This should be the most important point, but I keep it last because that’s the last thing on my mind after reading such generic mails.

Here’s another case:

I am redacting a lot of stuff there, but you can see that the name of the person who sent me this InMail, begins with the letter “T” and yet the end Thanks! is followed by the name Amim. Amim isn’t the last name either since the last name ends with the letter “N”. Nickname? No. It wouldn’t have sounded alarms if not for multiple people from the same company having mailed me with this boilerplate. To make this worse, the company is one of the well known multinational software company. Poor Amim.

Here’s why I don’t think I want to connect with you apart from the above pointers:

1. I see no value to me
2. I see no value to you either.

With zero value, a connection is a far-fetched.

Call me a selfish prick who wants value. The only exception to this rule are my classmates, or friends I know out of work, even if they are not really in my domain. That’s because I know them, and they hold a “potential” value, because I know them. It’s twisted, but that’s the only exception.

Here’s another connection request (not with an open position):

Don’t you see value here? The reason we converse is because we find something common to talk to. Your conversation can’t be of the form where you talk about apples and the other talks to you about oranges. Why can’t our online professional connections be the same?

One last anecdote. One person working in a start-up sent me a long mail explaining upfront the position and how they found me (not LinkedIn, for real — that’s what their start-up works on). He went onto explain the product and a possible salary range. I declined the call request since at the time I wasn’t looking for a change in job. Yet, he replied asking if I would be interested in the future. Lots of value there, don’t you think?