What Characters in Your LinkedIn Network?

The Connection Collector

The people who collect connections on LinkedIn like ’90s kids — and middle-aged men wearing tacky Hawaiian T-shirts today — collect sports cards. Imagine the Connection Collector in the pre-LinkedIn era. They would probably hit up every office and shopping mall hounding successful-looking people for business cards. These homies are also on Twitter.

Mufasa

The LinkedIn LION who has 5,000 connections. I don’t think I’ve seen 5,000 people in a crowd before, let alone actually know them. Granted, I don’t know exactly what 5,000 people in one place looks like. Sue me… I’ve never been to an Atlanta Hawks game (although that would be more like 3,000 people).

Simba

The student who just can’t wait to be king and thinks they’re ready now. They message the CEO of every company looking for a job. Look, ace, I’m sure whomever you’re messaging on LinkedIn would love to yell Hakuna Matata and have no worries for the rest of their days too. But they can’t if you keep interrupting them.Try doing this instead. Don’t ask someone you don’t know for help (and realistically expect them to be able to).

Rocky Balboa

These people make you feel you’re about to fight Carl Weathers or Mr. T. They littler your newsfeed with inspirational quotes about entrepreneurship, sales and subtle messages about changing jobs. Everyone needs inspiration once and a while. Once and a while being the key term. They rapidly post these quotes every five minutes. Imagine working with this person. They’d be too busy inspiring their LinkedIn contacts all day to do any work. You know this person goes home and binge-watches Rocky training montages all evening.  Could you imagine this guy in a conference call?

Bobba Fett – The hired goon that recruits people for jobs on LinkedIn. Headhunters in the offline world. These people scour LinkedIn looking for hard-to-find people to fill hard-to-find jobs. Think about people that are masters of a hard-to-find skill (know specific computer technologies, software platforms or how to dance with wolves during days of thunder).

Kraven The Hunter – The master salesperson. They’ve conquered and hunted all the game in the new business jungle… and you’re next. This sales-person handpicks their targets, leverages personal information we put on LinkedIn to find common ground and plays to our self-interest in order to win business. They are dangerous and diabolical because they lead with our passions (where we went to school and favorite hobbies) to get a response. LinkedIn calls them social sellers. These are 10 people we wish Kraven well in finding.