[LINK] "People Are Looking at Your LinkedIn Profile and They’re Laughing at You"

[rfmcdonald]

The New Yorker's Colin Stokes has a funny essay pretending to berate a LinkedIn user for not maintaining enough of a productive presence on that social networking site. (How are you supposed to do that, again?)

Dear LinkedIn Member,

People are looking at your LinkedIn profile, and they’re laughing at what you, in a public forum, have decided to present as your professional identity. Last week, five people (who chose to remain anonymous) scrolled through your hobbies and skills and broke into fits of laughter at each one. When they looked at your employment history, noting the various part-time jobs and internships you thought it would be a good idea to include, they were almost in tears. I mean, come on—you like playing racquetball and you list “social media” as a skill? What does that even mean? You know what Twitter is and you own those weird-looking goggles? Somebody give this man a job! Seriously, we hope that you have actually found a job and are not, in fact, starving to death because you are incompetent.

Maybe that was a bit harsh. We’re just trying to get you to put some thought into your profile and maybe upgrade to … Oh, my God! Have you changed your profile picture in the past decade? It looks like you cropped yourself out of a photo you took with your high-school girlfriend at prom. Was prom the last time you wore a suit? I may have to sit down for a minute and catch my breath because, here at LinkedIn, we have never laughed quite so hard. Seriously, I just sent your profile to the C.E.O., and he forwarded it to the entire staff with the caption “Someone connect this guy to the twenty-first century!”

I probably shouldn’t have shared that anecdote with you, now that I think about it. But if that’s what it takes to get you to fix your profile, then I think the ends justify the means.