When it comes to social media, the easiest places to connect with me are Twitter and LinkedIn. Anyone can follow me on Twitter (and all my tweets are public) and as long as you look like a real person and not spam, I’ll accept your invitation to connect on LinkedIn. I only seek out people on LinkedIn if I know them in real life or if there’s someone I want to meet and LinkedIn is the only way I can contact them.
I recently accepted an invitation to connect with someone on LinkedIn who lives out of state, who shortly thereafter sent me a question about whether I could help with a tax question for him and his business. My profile says I do business law so I’m not surprised to get a question about taxes that’s related to running a business. For the record, I don’t do tax law and I suggested he contact his state or county bar association and request a referral.
He responded and thanked me, and then he asked ask if I was married because he’s “simply stunned at [my] beauty.†He wants to be my friend and get to know me better.
How do I respond to that? Who hits on someone via LinkedIn? It’s weird, especially since we live in different states! I look at LinkedIn as a forum for professional networking so it threw me off guard to have someone approach me with a romantic tone, especially since he doesn’t know anything about me except what’s on my profile. It’s like he wants to date my resume. Is that bizarre to anyone else?
I haven’t responded to this and I’m not sure if there even is an appropriate response. I’m not interested in getting to know him because (1) I don’t know him (and don’t plan to since he doesn’t live anywhere close to me) and (2) it’s weird that he hit on me via LinkedIn. (And people who do know me in real life know what a big deal it is for me to consider something “weird.â€)
If you have any suggestions about what I should say to this guy (or not) please leave it as a comment.
PS – In case you haven’t figured it out, anything you do or say in my presence can and will end up on my blog. Life is blog material!