1

Recently I have taken my first Management position within IT at a fairly large medical practice. I do have decision making power over all things IT. With that being said, I was very excited to update my LinkedIn Profile to reflect my new position and role. Not shortly after, I was getting networking request and messages from people in every type of industry trying to “talk” to me and “just connect” (most were account/sales reps).

Now I am not complaining about my new found “fame” on LinkedIn. What I was curious about was how my peers in IT handle these requests? Do you speak to each one because they might have something to offer and you not realize it? Do you ignore them? Do you pick and choose? I’m very interested in getting everyone’s opinion.

4 Spice ups
2

I usually acknowledge their request, will even add them, but usually my reply is something along the lines of “we don’t have any plans at the moment that your product would be used for at the moment, when we look to implement something we will reach out, or if I am looking to learn more we will reach out” basically thanks I will keep you in mind if I need your services or products…

3

First - this is not a Spiceworks query so I have removed this from the Spiceworks forum.

I find these days, that linked in is a bit of a garbage pit. Despite saying clearly I am not interested in connections in general - I still get loads. I just delete the requests from people who can bother to explain why they want to connect. Some are honest -they just want to sell you stuff (and can also get deleted).

I hate it a lot that I seem to have to have a paid subscription in order to reply to the person asking who they are and why they want to connect.

If it were me, I’d accept the requests from anyone who might be able to help. I have around 900 connections (down from 1500!), and to be honest, less than 1% of them ever contact me at all - and those are mainly via other mechanisms.

So be wary.

4

Welcome to the social media cesspool that is LinkedIn. I typically will accept most requests.

However, when I get the sales calls at work I tell them I’m not interested and hang up.

5

Congrats on your new position, and your newly-found IT spending power! Sales reps and prospectors tend to find out (and contact you) whenever you post about this sort of thing on social media :slight_smile:

Depending on how many solicitations you’re receiving daily/weekly, I suppose the polite course of action is to reply “not interested” - or simply ignore them.

Of course, there may be a few that interest you, so it never hurts to do a intro phone call and/or 30 minute demo with a rep to learn more.

6

As a VP I get this all the time, as a independent consultant no so much. In most cases, I send them to voice mail when they call, and if it is interesting or might be related to a project I’ll call them back, other wise in 30 days the VM message gets deleted.

For “connection” request on LinkedIn (even Facebook for that matter) I accept them most of the time, one never knows what project is coming or role change is coming where they might be useful down the road or when/if they might become a client.

About once a year I do a LinkedIn clean out, about the same time I clean out my outlook pst files and exchange mailbox. I also use this time to clean out my Facebook “friends” as well. If I have not interacted with them in over a year or more…POOF be gone.