People have been congratulating me on my new job. I’m very
grateful for the messages of goodwill. The only problem is, I haven’t actually got
a new job!
People appear to have been responding to messages generated
by LinkedIn. These tell my contacts that I have a new job and suggest they
congratulate me (using the button provided). Some of my contacts have even re-checked
my LinkedIn profile, presumably to see what my new job actually was.
The cause of this misfiring of LinkedIn messages was no doubt the
fact that I had added some additional details to my LinkedIn profile.
I added details of a second current part-time “job” which I
rather grandiosely described as “Rental Property Manager (Private)”. I thought
this would be useful in rounding out my profile with the different and valuable
experience I had gained through renting out houses for the last six years.
I entered the start date (the year 2007) and left the end
date blank (as this continues to this day).
LinkedIn must run some routine processes against its
“back-end” databases which look for particular features and then generate electronic
junk mail (sorry, I should say “generate carefully targeted communications of
great interest and value”).
The logic LinkedIn is applying must ignore the start date of
a newly entered job and focus solely on the fact that there is no end date.
i.e. if it is a “current” job and it is newly entered, it must be a “new job”
Hence LinkedIn thinks something which started six years ago
is “new”.
Here’s the rub: If I happen to be looking for a new job, I
might want to enhance my profile on LinkedIn by adding additional details of
my experience. Surely that would seem sensible. But if, as a result, LinkedIn erroneously congratulates me on
having found a new job, then all my
contacts will assume the search is over and stop keeping an eye out for me!
Edgar Bolton. 2013
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