I seem to be getting more and more LinkedIn connection requests these days from people I’ve never either met or spoken to in an online group and, in many cases, have absolutely no obvious connection with whatsoever. That isn’t necessarily a bad thing because I’ve reached out to complete strangers myself on occasions, but if I do, I’ll always include a personal note explaining why I’d like to connect. Yes, I know LinkedIn limits the number of personalised invitations you can send each month, but despite hearing people complain about it, I’ve genuinely never managed to hit that limit. If I think someone is worth connecting with, they’re certainly worth the thirty seconds it takes to introduce myself.
When I do accept a request from someone I don’t know, I’ll quite often reply with a simple “Thanks for connecting. What made you want to connect? Would it be useful to have a chat and see if there are any synergies between what we do?” It’s hardly an interrogation; it’s simply trying to start the conversation – what surprises me is how often… nothing happens. Well over half the time there isn’t even a reply. Sometimes I’ll get a vague excuse a week later, sometimes complete silence. Spoiler alert: connection removed. SMH, because it appears to confirm that my suspicion that they probably aren’t interested in connecting with me at all.
This makes me wonder whether we’ve forgotten what the word “connection” in business actually means – LinkedIn was built around the idea of professional networking, introducing people, sharing knowledge and creating opportunities that might never have happened otherwise. Somewhere along the way, though, it feels as though, for some people, collecting connections became the objective rather than the consequence. It’s almost as if the number itself has become a status symbol, with that magical “500+” sitting proudly on a profile as though it tells us something meaningful about the person behind it. Perhaps it does. Then again, perhaps it simply tells us they’ve clicked “Accept” a lot.
Every week I receive connection requests from people I’ve never met, never spoken to and, quite often, have absolutely nothing in common with professionally. Sometimes they arrive with a thoughtful message explaining why they’d like to connect, what they have in common with my work or why they think we could benefit from knowing each other. Those are easy to understand because there is context, there is purpose and, more importantly, there is another human being making the effort to introduce themselves. Unfortunately, they seem to be the exception rather than the rule.
Far more common is the anonymous invitation containing nothing more than a name, a photograph and at that point I’m left playing detective.
Do we have mutual contacts?
Have we attended the same conference?
Have they read something I’ve written?
Are they genuinely interested in what I do, or have they simply worked their way through a list of suggested profiles clicking “Connect” on every one of them?
It’s a curious way to begin what is supposedly a professional relationship.
I sometimes wonder whether the connection request is actually intended for me at all. Increasingly, maybe I’m simply one of the doorways to somebody else’s objectives. For anyone in sales, recruitment, marketing or business development, every accepted invitation potentially opens up an entirely new network of people to approach. One accepted request can expose hundreds, perhaps thousands, of second and third-degree connections. That’s incredibly valuable if your goal is finding prospects, identifying decision-makers or simply making your own profile appear more established. Again, there is nothing inherently wrong with that because networking has always involved meeting people who might introduce you to others. The difference is that technology allows us to do it at a scale that would have seemed absurd twenty years ago.
There is another side to LinkedIn connections – the way some people appear to use your posts as a source of inspiration, ideas and even content. Now, I’m absolutely not talking about someone who reads something I’ve written, finds it interesting and then openly says, “This made me think,” or shares it with their own thoughts added to the conversation. That is exactly what LinkedIn should be about: ideas should travel, conversations should develop and nobody owns a thought simply because they were the first person to write it down. What does make me raise an eyebrow, though, is when someone connects with you, follows what you are doing and then, a little while later, you start seeing very similar themes, phrases or concepts appearing in their own content without any acknowledgement or reference back. It becomes particularly noticeable when it involves something quite specific rather than a general business topic that thousands of people are already discussing.
For example, we have talked about “ikigai” on our website for years. It is certainly not a secret concept, and I’m not suggesting anyone owns the word, but it is also not exactly a phrase that was part of most people’s everyday business vocabulary. Then, rather curiously, a few years ago it suddenly became the focus phrase for a small micro-business. Could it be coincidence? Of course it could. People do discover similar ideas independently, and the internet has made it easier than ever for concepts to spread. However, when something you have been talking about for a long time suddenly appears elsewhere in a very similar context, it does make you stop and wonder whether it really is coincidence or whether someone has been quietly taking notes.
The irony is that LinkedIn makes this behaviour incredibly easy. We encourage people to share knowledge, build networks and put our ideas into the public domain, but that openness also means our thoughts, language and experiences are there for others to see, borrow from and adapt. The difference, for me, is quite simple: being inspired by someone else’s work is a positive thing; building on an idea and adding your own perspective is how professional conversations evolve. But quietly lifting someone’s thinking, language or approach while presenting it as entirely your own feels very different. A connection should be the start of a conversation, not simply a way of gaining access to someone else’s ideas. (Yes I have blocked that marketing company!).
Then there is the psychology of numbers, because many of us become strangely impressed by them, even when they tell us remarkably little. T
housands of followers must mean someone is influential.
Hundreds of recommendations must mean they’re exceptional.
More than 500 connections must surely mean they’re well respected. Or perhaps it simply means they never decline an invitation.
Quantity has a habit of disguising itself as quality online, and I think we sometimes fall for it far too easily.
That leaves me with a question I genuinely don’t know the answer to. What is the etiquette these days when somebody you don’t know sends you a connection request? Are we expected to accept because that’s what networking is all about, or is it perfectly reasonable to ask why they want to connect in the first place? If someone knocked on my office door, introduced themselves and asked whether they could browse my professional contacts, I’d probably decline quoting GDPR. Online, however, many of us make exactly that decision in less than ten seconds.
I’ve spoken to people who accept absolutely everyone because they believe every connection is a potential opportunity. I’ve spoken to others who won’t accept anyone they haven’t met in person because they see LinkedIn as an extension of their existing professional relationships rather than a place to create new ones. Both approaches make perfect sense, which probably explains why there is no universally accepted protocol – we’re all possibly just “winging it”.
Personally, I think there is something slightly odd about calling someone a connection when the first interaction you ever have with them is an automated sales pitch that arrives thirty seconds after you’ve accepted their request. I appreciate people have businesses to grow, services to promote and targets to hit, but surely networking was always supposed to begin with a conversation rather than a sales funnel. Building relationships has somehow become confused with building databases, and I can’t help wondering whether we’ve lost something valuable in the process.
What also intrigues me is how quickly we make assumptions based on the company someone keeps. We see mutual connections and immediately feel more comfortable, almost as though trust is transferable. If 5 people I know are connected to someone, does that really tell me anything about them? Perhaps those five people accepted the request for exactly the same reason I might, without giving it more than a passing glance. Mutual connections are useful context, but they’re hardly a character reference.
None of this is an argument against connecting with people you’ve never met. Some of the most interesting conversations I’ve had, and some of the most valuable professional relationships I’ve built, began with complete strangers reaching out. The difference was that they treated the invitation as the beginning of a conversation rather than the completion of a transaction. They explained who they were, why they were getting in touch and why they thought we might have something worth discussing. It took them less than a minute to write, yet it made all the difference.
Perhaps that’s what I find myself missing. Technology has made it easier than ever to connect with people all over the world, but in doing so we’ve allowed the mechanics of networking to replace the manners that once made it meaningful. Clicking “Connect” is effortless; building trust still takes time, curiosity and a little bit of effort from both sides.
So I’m genuinely curious : when a complete stranger sends you a LinkedIn connection request with no message and no obvious reason for connecting, what do you do? Do you accept because you never know where a conversation might lead, or do you politely decline because, in your mind, a connection should actually mean there has been one? I’d love to know where everyone else draws that line.
