What is it with some baby boomers who just will not try to learn to use LinkedIn?
It’s like their fingers will fall off if they have to learn to post something in a Group or they will go blind if they express themselves as uniquely qualified with their accumulated experience and wisdom!
So they wimp out and shut down. Some have no interest in learning something new, and too often copy-paste their resume as their profile! Not all but enough of them. I see it almost daily.
I am a boomer too. I really don’t understand the “I can’t” mental block that intelligent, seasoned professionals have against wanting to master the beast called LinkedIn, especially since it can propel them in their career, when used properly!
We all mastered other beasts: Word, Excel, PowerPoint, etc. And remarkably, we survived. We had to. In fact we rely on them daily!
And it’s not just the boomerset who transgress, although the LinkedIn inertia I see seems to coagulate around the over-50 set.
Case in point: the other day a smart consultant (and boomer too!) whom I (still) respect just flat-out resisted my offering to help him place a PDF job opening on our networking group’s LinkedIn Group page. “Takes two seconds,” I promised him, “call me and we can do this together.”
He told me he’d rather use email to do so. And he did, because it came across my screen, instead of his taking me up on my offer to walk him through, step-by-step!
Yes siree-Bob, email is easier of course, but it is old-fashioned, and heavens-to-betsy, it still works, but so does morse code, smoke signals, and telex, yet no one admits under torture to using them anymore. Or they once roamed the business frontier and are extinct.
So, (some) boomers, I will blogshame you into learning how to really use LinkedIn, not because you want to, but because you have to, to keep up in today’s and tomorrow’s business arena.
Or the lions will eat you as an appetizer.
