The person who was the thorn in my side this spring has now asked me (well, via one of those automated, semi-anonymous e-mail things) to join his list of contacts or whatever it's called on LinkedIn.
I don't do LinkedIn. Yes, I know, I suppose I am potentially shooting myself in the foot if I ever apply for another job somewhere else (it seems to be a networking site), but then again, having a blog where I post pictures of myself with pancakes on my head has probably shot my chances of getting another job somewhere else (if I ever wanted one) in a location on the body considerably higher up than the foot. (And considering the job market in the U.S., particularly for academics, and considering that the major problems I have with my career here is the occasional odd student, and usually they're out of my life once the semester ends...at this point I'd be content to stay here until retirement, around 2036 or so.)
I'm just hoping this is not an entree to requests for recommendations for jobs, because I'd have to look at the person and say, "You realize I am always honest on those things, don't you?"
We're also being pushed to join some campus-wide social networking thing. My chair said, "I'm not telling you you have to, in case you'd rather stab your eyes out with a fork rather than be a part of it, but I am telling you it's out there." (I'm guessing this arose after the kibosh was put on things like using the mass e-mail system to do things like advertise baby showers and "if you want to buy Boy Scout Popcorn, Kerri in 321 Science has it for sale.") I haven't joined yet. Not because I feel particularly eye-stabby over things like social networking (though I tend to prefer to use my social-networking time as, well, SOCIAL time) but mainly because it has not been adequately proven to me that it's a valuable use of my time.
(And yes, darnit, reposing particularly funny LOLcats on CPAAG on Ravelry IS a valuable use of my time)
2 comments:
Enh, most of these sites will ask you, once you join, if you want to forward invites to "all your friends"? e.g. spam everyone in your email address book. I don't remember if LinkedIn does this, but it might well be the case.
I can't imagine even special snowflake could be so dense as to ask you for a recommendation.
What Big Alice said. I get ones all the time from people that I wrote to once to answer a question they had about our equipment. It seems like LinkedIn in particular makes the "Please email everyone I've ever written to" button easy to miss.
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