And stop being so serious.
The dumbest debate on LinkedIn (and there’s a lot of contenders) is if the “Open To Work” green banner is good or bad. That debate is over.
If you’re not familiar with the controversy:
Pro-Green Banner people like it because it, you know, tells people they’re looking for a job. Which is pretty much the entire point of LinkedIn in the first place.
Anti-Green Banner people don’t like it because they say – and I’m paraphrasing here – it makes you look like a helpless, pathetic dum dum who deserves whatever suffering and misery comes from bad career luck. They hold this viewpoint because they make their living selling job seeking courses showing you the ‘real’ way to find a job for however much of your hard earned savings they can grift you for.
Luckily, my friend Chris Taylor ended this debate with 5 simple words attached to his Green Banner post: “Well, that was a mistake.”
In 1 week, this post resulted in 65,000 views, and more importantly: 10 interviews.
Case closed. Suck it, hucksters.
But it did more than that. It also crushed one of the other most annoying trends on LinkedIn: people leaving their jobs and feeling obligated to thank whomever fired them, put them through the ringer, ran a crappy company, etc.
Look, by no means and I’m saying anyone should put their old companies on blast. There’s a time and a place to vent and let loose. Doing it in front of thousands of strangers who could potentially hire you ain’t it.
What I am saying is going out of your way to do the opposite in hopes of showing everyone how endlessly positive and grateful you are is equally foolish. Because everyone knows (or at least suspects) it’s fake. (And yes, I do realize lots of people do leave on good circumstances and it’s not fake every time.)
Everyone talks about authenticity being important, but many don’t know what it actually looks like. There’s a reason why LinkedIn gets dunked on by every non-LinkedIn user: it’s the least authentic site around.
But Chris nailed it.
Have fun. Make jokes. Say what needs to be said. Don’t take yourself too seriously.
You can do all this without being negative or “unprofessional.”
People want the vibe there to be that way. They’ll react positively when they see it.
Partner at Hirewell. #3 Ranked Sarcastic Commenter on LinkedIn.
