Andrew Melder

I’ve been thinking a lot about my online presence for career and professional purposes recently; even before I received a terribly depressing ad for LinkedIn.

Like many in the technology space, I have defaulted my professional online engagement to LinkedIn. I’ll admit I haven’t hated all of it, and even made a few good connections to others in my specific profession along the way. However a lot of it is time filler content.

While there’s occasionally a good discussion around an interesting topic, that’s increasingly rare as attention seeking copycats reshare the same (often AI generated) drivel as someone else when they see it get engagement through likes and comments.

Sound familiar? LinkedIn is in many ways, the new Facebook.

And much like Facebook, LinkedIn is also quickly being drowned in political opinions; some of which is occasionally astonishing that they would publicly post such attitudes on any platform, let alone something that’s meant to be a professional forum.

Is a connection request really connecting?

As I’ve started to get involved a little more in professional events, online interest groups, the very rare in person meetup and conferences; I’ve started to wonder if engaging on LinkedIn and occasionally liking or commenting on each others posts really achieves anything meaningful.

I’ve recently started to engage in online catchups with a group of ITSM professionals that I have connected with via LinkedIn for at least a year. However, it’s only in the last few months since I’ve been more active in these online sessions that I’ve started to really understand not only what they do, but how they think about ITSM. Those perspectives outside of my usual colleagues have been very useful in breaking some pre-conceptions about certain topics that I have developed over the years. While uncomfortable, I like it when my thoughts on the topic are challenged by a differing opinion.

While we can have that in LinkedIn on occasion; I know at least one of these other participants has been posting similar thoughts on LinkedIn prior, which I have been reading and following. But it occurs to me that I may not be truly taking in the content of these posts among scrolling the feed.

Of course, a direct engagement with someone is always going to be more fruitful and informative than reading someone’s post; but it does feel like many of us are increasingly replacing one with the other.

The Networking problem

As someone who has seriously high levels of social anxiety at times, is not particularly good at small talk and is horrible at networking; it’s fair to say I can’t stand it. Times where I have pushed myself out of my comfort zone to try and improve it, I’ve felt myself be inauthentic and insincere somehow.

To be honest, my general feeling on networking still remains highly pessimistic in terms of the authenticity (or lack thereof) involved; and I also don’t think I’m alone here. It’s this perception that I feel maybe leading to an increase in using platforms like LinkedIn as a replacement to more traditional networking opportunities for a subset of individuals like myself.

Like most things, there’s probably a balance here. Many are effectively utilising LinkedIn as a platform to either maintain professional relationships or develop new ones; but in combination with other relationship building skills like direct catchups or professional engagements that I lack.

How I intend to engage better without LinkedIn

I’ve considered deleting my LinkedIn account.

Part of this desire is to force myself away from the increasingly annoying parts of the platform; the other part is forcing myself to engage in more productive and direct ways in my professional life.

I signed myself up to attend a national conference later in the year which I’m already dreading (but looking forward to a trip to another city).

Potentially without the crux of simply connecting with people I meet professionally via a LinkedIn request, to get lost in the sea of random posts among the algorithm and my (currently) 375 other connections on the platform; I’ll need to decide on the best way to keep in contact with people.

Not only will I need to get beyond the discomfort of giving out my personal contact details; but also the discomfort of actually following up with people afterwards and actively keeping in touch. This part scares the fucking shit out of me and triggers the anxiety just thinking about it.

In the end, I know I need to push myself on this. However, I also know that if somehow my lotto numbers come up many of you may never hear from me again :D