The 5 types of people you'll meet on LinkedIn

With the emergence of finding employment opportunities online in recent years, more and more people have flocked to LinkedIn as a way to showcase their credentials and flex their professional muscle in front of prospective employers.

It’s also a platform that supports business connections that could potentially lead to bigger and greater opportunities.

That's what LinkedIn is supposed to do. By right lah.

By left though, we’ve found that there’s a wide variety of users on LinkedIn who use it for other purposes - whether it’s to get validation, to find love, or to simply peddle their goods.

Introducing… the 5 types of people you see on LinkedIn!

1. The flexer

The flexer makes sure to highlight and post about every single thing they have done - even the most insignificant things. The concept of paiseh does not exist in their universe.

Here’s a rundown of their thought process when it comes to using the platform.

“Completed a Microsoft Paint course? Gotta post about it on LinkedIn! Employers will see me as someone who is all about self-enrichment.”

“Picked up a plastic bottle off the street and threw it in the recycling bin? Gotta post about it on LinkedIn! It shows that I’m someone who possesses the right moral values and is proactive in caring for the environment.”

“Rejected from an interview? Gotta post about it on LinkedIn! It shows that I had the determination to try and I take rejections well.”

You get the drill lah.

2. The motivational speaker

The motivational speaker is always ready to dish out some much-needed #motivation for their legion of supposedly unmotivated followers.

You will spot the motivational speaker constantly posting about or reposting motivational quotes or career advice, whether it's through the form of self-created content or reposts. This is usually accompanied by a barrage of hashtags for additional visibility.

Sometimes you can't help but wonder why these people are wasting their energy being all #motivational on LinkedIn when they can channel it to become  actual motivational speakers earning actual money.

ALSO READ: 10 female leaders in Singapore give career advice

3. The Tinder

If it isn’t obvious enough, the Tinder uses LinkedIn just like a dating app. With the wide variety of opportunities available on LinkedIn, people are encouraged to keep their profiles and inboxes wide open. Uh-oh.

The Tinder takes advantage of this and pounces upon any profiles they find attractive based on their profile photo, dropping messages of varying subtlety ranging from “Hey I think you’re a very aspiring professional, how about we meet to talk business?” to “You and me at my place tonight?”. We’re not even going to go into the more explicit ones.

It’d be interesting to see how many “matches” the Tinder gets from LinkedIn daily. Not getting our hopes up though.

4. The anonymous

The anonymous is always hidden, discreetly operating on their own. Just as its namesake implies, the anonymous has a pretty barebones presence on LinkedIn. They never comment or post, and never maintain their LinkedIn profile save for the most necessary details.

Their profiles are usually bare, with a lack of description with regards to work experience and education.

The anonymous are the ones who let their work rather than their LinkedIn do the talking – and many will go on to update their profiles with new, lucrative opportunities that would make you go, “How did this person get this job with THAT LinkedIn?!”

ALSO READ: 3 steps to turn your LinkedIn profile into an opportunities magnet

5. The seller

The seller treats LinkedIn like a professional version of Carousell. No matter what industry they're in, they aim to bombard innocent users like you and me with invitations to connect alongside messages such as "Try out our services!" or the dreaded "Would you be free for a call to talk about your finances?".

Yes, even LinkedIn isn’t spared from the wrath of financial advisors. If that’s not a guaranteed sign that times are hard, I don’t know what is.

This article was first published in Wonderwall.sg.