I’ll connect to you on linkedin if I have met you – could be virtually- in a work context. I will sometimes make exceptions if you’re someone really interesting.
So when I got an invite from a name I didn’t know with just the generic invite text I went to linkedin site and checked the profile.
Not a company I’ve ever had contact with but is working in the same field. Has over 500 connections, one of whom is a first level connection to me and a very good friend. Interesting.
So I contact my friend, who has put me in contact with some excellent people in the past and on whose recommendation I would connect to someone, I ask him how well he knows the requestor.
Not well it turns out, my friend – being a far more generous person than I – has a very open approach to linkedin connects with almost anyone who requests it. As it happens he approved the request about 20 minutes before I got my request.
It is of course completely fine to use Linkedin to “harvest” contacts, I just feel that what you are creating is a telephone directory and is not a reflection of your personal network.
I’ve hit ignore.
How do you decide whether to connect?
Change Meme 