Monday, March 2, 2009

On LinkedIn, Don’t Get LockedOut! – part iv

part iv – what happens if you get lockedout of linkedin?

Once your account has been locked you are restricted in how you invite people into your network. In order to add ANYONE to your connections list in you must have the person's email address. "Not a big deal", you say. Yes, it can be.

First Scenario
Suppose you want to add someone you went to high school with. You search the LinkedIn site using that person's name (as you remember it) and you find them. Great, there is only one listed. It has to be them, right? You start to send them an invite, but you're stopped because you don't have an email address for them. And if you are part of the crowd that attended high school in the 80's and prior (like yours truly), we didn't have email addresses back then. Heck we didn't have a World Wide Web. Now what do you do?

You can search the Internet and hope that a student or alumnus has created a website for your school, and that there is an alumni database of all the former students. If so, pray that the list includes email addresses. Fine so far? However, how many of us have more than one email address? Unless the email address in the alumni database matches the email address they registered with/use in LinkedIn, no connection will be made here. You invite will be bounced and no connection will be made with that person.

Second Scenario
Let's say you don't care to connect with any of the losers [;-) you knew in high school (or college, or the old neighborhood gang). Say you want to reconnect with one of your colleagues from a former (or current) employer. Even though the name of the company is part of your experience in your profile, you STILL have to enter their email address in order to send the invite.

Bottom Line. DON'T GET LOCKEDOUT!

To paraphrase Jason Alba's book "I'm On LinkedIn. Now What?" Click here to find out "I'm LockedOut of LinkedIn. Now What?"

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