How NOT to Reply to Job Posts on LinkedIn

Photo credit: Nan Palmero

With a little effort, you can lose that dream job with a carefully crafted comment on LinkedIn.

Last week I saw a recruitment post on a LinkedIn group. If I'm honest, I have to say that it might well have been spam, certainly the organisation the poster works for has a less than stellar reputation in some parts, but that's neither here nor there. For this discussion, the poster gets the benefit of the doubt.

The message ended with "I am recruiting now" and "Message me if you are interested". There are five public comments from interested parties:

• What is it that you do?
• What's the business about? I'm really interested.
• Hello, I am interested in hearing about your business. :)
• Interested, too. What's it about?
• Can you please send further information (****@gmail.com)

Now, I know quite a bit about the job, because I opened the poster's LinkedIn profile, had a quick read and clicked through to the web site. At this point put yourself in the position of the recruiter. Having posted your vacancy information, you get two sets of replies:

• Those who read your LinkedIn profile and web site and contacted you directly with a message indicating they had done some research and were interested in what you were doing and what the job might involve.
• Those who posted a follow-up asking what it was all about, with no hint that they were prepared to spend even a small amount of time researching your business.

Which set will you use as a basis for your shortlist?