OPINION
AI-generated headshots, meandering personal statements, sycophantic comments. Dan Ahwa unpacks the evolution of how a job networking site has ushered in an era of too much information.
Our relationships with social media can be fraught.
Some like to frown upon Instagram for its vapidness - despite many of us
On TikTok, there’s a generational divide. Gen X and Y are keeping up with Gen Z’s preferred social media platform, their go-to social media destination is known to spit out pop-cultural trends at rapid speed; it’s not unusual to go from unhinged Brat summers to the modest about-face of demure-core in the space of a few days, a compelling example of how our social media diet can impact our realities.
Meanwhile on X, the artist formerly known as Twitter, the platform is still the go-to for talking heads, the media-obsessed, conspiracy theorists and trolls.
But if there was one social media platform that has truly given me the ick this year, it’s LinkedIn.
It’s the digital version of a soulless corporation. While humour both dark and wholesome helps underpin much of what we see scrolling past on TikTok and Instagram, for example, LinkedIn is at its best earnest, and at worst, wholly unfunny.
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Advertise with NZME.It’s the only social media platform where you can find random networking messages in your DMs from global executive managers that read “pleasure to be connected with you and looking forward to staying in touch” or long-winded posts about the “blood, sweat, and tears” invested in a job someone was contractually required to do.
I confess that I too have participated in LinkedIn’s formula of professional baiting - the sharing of professional achievements, the straight-laced profile picture, the comments of “well done” and “congrats!” on posts from vague acquaintances I used to work with - but why?
We all know how mystery is underrated when it comes to our digital personas, but unlike the parts of ourselves we sparingly give away on other social platforms, another type of online performance is at play on LinkedIn.
It’s a performance that makes you more attractive to potential employers and allows you to connect with other industries for future collaboration; but more importantly, it lets potential employers know you are indeed “open for work”.
As a journalist, it’s an ideal way for me to connect with interview subjects or find out about a company and its general public perception. As a reluctant participant, it’s one of those obligatory parts of being a working professional, some reassurance that if things don’t work out, at least I’ve made some effort to “network”. However, like all of the social media platforms we have signed up for to stay connected, LinkedIn at times can feel like a chore.
Like any real-life working environment, it takes effort to be the nice, agreeable employee who plays by the book, and in the world of LinkedIn those rules apply too, with performances from a range of players. The C-suite execs who post corporate platitudes about their journey to the top. The young entrepreneur who posts about their business awards. The micro-manager who has no problem presenting a more amiable version of themselves compared to the one in reality.
Its earnestness is best parodied by content creator and former TikTok global programs manager Pasha Grozdov, whose mockery of faux-congratulatory comments and diary-entry-like posts on LinkedIn held a mirror up to our own undignified awkwardness when it comes to online schmoozing.
When LinkedIn launched in 2003, it was known as a pragmatic platform with easy job updates.
While it still serves this function, it has naturally evolved as it should to include tools like a creator mode that allows “LinkedInfluencers” to amplify their reach beyond their pre-existing networks, along with the arrival of an AI assistant for paid LinkedIn Premium users.
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Advertise with NZME.LinkedIn is a convenient de facto tool for professional networking, and for many of us who have lived through some type of hybrid working trauma during the pandemic, you’ll know how easy it is to slip into the unthinkable realm of oversharing. Vulnerability and authenticity are buzzwords now expected of our professional journeys, with many users on LinkedIn taking full opportunity to post the type of information one would normally reserve for a private session with their therapist.
In 2022, Braden Wallake, chief executive of business-to-business marketing agency HyperSocial, shared a post on LinkedIn with a photo of him crying after laying staff off in a round of redundancies in a post that included a revealing insight into the emotional toll the process had taken on him.
“Days like today, I wish I was a business owner that was only money-driven and didn’t care about who he hurt along the way,” he wrote. “But I’m not. So, I just want people to see, that not every CEO out there is cold-hearted and doesn’t care when he/she have to lay people off.
“I know it isn’t professional to tell my employees that I love them. But from the bottom of my heart, I hope they know how much I do,” he added.
Was it appropriate to use LinkedIn - a social platform that is meant to mirror our professional selves - to display that much emotional turmoil? Do any of us really want to see our leaders weeping on social media? Vulnerability is a virtue we should all harness when we can - but surely with some boundaries.
Later that year in October, Brayden also shared on a LinkedIn post news of his grandmother’s passing, with some commentators criticising him for using her death as another opportunity to promote his business.
While Braden’s humanity is commendable to some, I will argue that perhaps LinkedIn isn’t the platform to do this on. Facebook maybe. Instagram sure. There’s a time and place; read the room; know your audience.
The few times I’ve posted on LinkedIn - mostly links to stories I’ve written, work I’ve done, or events and panel discussions I am part of and need to promote - I always find myself slightly grimacing in pain before pressing publish. Who the hell is this version of myself?
I know it’s the professional one who gets the job done, but it’s also one I can’t be bothered being around all the time. Our jobs are not our lives.
With 50.6% of LinkedIn users aged between 25 and 34, this large demographic is at a professional crossroads already. The younger end of the spectrum don’t care for office politics and are choosing to leave the country; while the latter part from mid-30s to early 40s have realised that their ambition to work towards their dream jobs doesn’t necessarily matter anymore. Doing what makes you happy does.
Our ambitions and what matters to us have changed over the past four years and part of what makes LinkedIn so deeply uncool at times is how it encourages work to dominate the conversation. It’s the equivalent of asking someone what they do at a party - and what’s more cringy than that?
On the flipside, yes, our professional lives of course do hold some value, and as we navigate the way we interact with people personally and professionally on LinkedIn, it’s important to remember why we should be - to quote viral sensation Jools Lebron - more mindful, more considerate (maybe even demure). I know there are days when many of us want to cry at the office, but it takes a certain willpower to not do that in front of your colleagues.
In this cost-of-living era, participating in a tool that will no doubt help you land a job with a potential employer is important - so consider your digital footprint. How you interact with others online in general requires some level of responsibility.
In recent Stats NZ data, unemployment in New Zealand was reported at 4.3% in the three months ended March, up from 4% in the previous quarter, the highest it has been since mid-2021. Many of us know at least one person who has left the country in pursuit of better work opportunities overseas, too.
A platform like LinkedIn should therefore serve its purpose in helping - not hindering - the way we navigate our professional lives and support our goals of true networking and connection so that we can, as we do in real life, close the door and leave work at work and go home to the parts of our personal lives that matter the most.
There should absolutely be time and space for celebrating professional success and exploring fruitful networking opportunities that will give us the best opportunities in life.
But perhaps we can do it with our dignity intact too.
Dan Ahwa is Viva’s fashion and creative director and a senior premium lifestyle journalist for the New Zealand Herald, specialising in the intersections of style, luxury, art and culture.
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