The 3 trust models within LinkedIn
If you’ve used LinkedIn for a little while, you are probably familiar with the recommendation process. I’ve said some inflammatory things about recommendations before, because I think it fails at its intended purpose. The intent was to build a web of trust that was valid across the entire LinkedIn network, and acted as a kind of currency. I’m leery of that, and I see someone with a lot of recommendations a lot like someone with a lot of professional certifications. It’s fishy, and looks to me like they are trying to make up for something.
Before you explore trust models in LinkedIn, you should attempt to connect with everyone (yes everyone!) you’ve ever worked with. After you’ve done that, I think you should be using the LinkedIn recommendations to build 3 separate trust models.
- Build a web of trust:
- From your oldest professional experience forward, write recommendations for your contacts who are exceptional. This should define the list of people that you would trust to do a great job. These are the people on your “short list”, or the people you’d like to find a way to work with again.
- Don’t ask for a recommendation back! Even though LinkedIn facilitates this, I don’t think its a good idea. It’s cheesy and puts people in an awkward position.
- Follow your own web of trust. Try and meet the people recommended by the people you’ve recommended. You’ll probably find that they are 1st tier professionals as well.
- Identify the web of indifference:
- LinkedIn has really done us a disservice with the “ask people to recommend me” stage of setting up your account. It puts peer pressure and politeness on the forefront of the process, which is more or less worthless.
- Look for people who have recommended dozens of other people. If they ran their own company would they immediately try and hire all of those people they’ve recommended? I find that very unlikely. In this case it’s someone who is probably a good networker and just being nice. No harm, no foul, but also no value.
- Also look for intra-company recommendations. In an average company this is just peer pressure. I completely ignore these.
- Look for lots of recommendations to and from consulting/sales organizations. It might be one of the above cases, or it might contrived. Most people are not aware that the web of trust is tainted, and some people are trying to use it to their advantage. It’s not that I don’t trust sales/marketing people, it’s that I don’t trust sales/marketing people.
- Build a web of distrust:
- Make sure you’ve connected with everyone you hate and would rather die than work with again. It’s seems crazy, but this is no Facebook and you are not here to share pictures of your kids. These are the people who are not good at their jobs, and make things worse for everyone.
- Keep an eye on “the bad people.” Where do they work? Who do they work with? Do they work for the competition? Worse yet, do they work for a client?
- Look for people who recommend anyone in your web of distrust. Mark them down as suckers and/or idiots. Stay away from them, their companies and their products if it seems appropriate.
- Be wary of any recommended by toxic professionals. On LinkedIn you have to approve the posting of a recommendation. What kind of person posts a recommendation by someone in your bottom 1% of the working world? Stay away.
This probably sounds like a lot of work, particularly if you’ve done a lot of networking. It’s not the type of thing you’d check on every week. If you are ready to hire or be hired, I don’t think you can safely skip these steps anymore.
-chorn
