Today, I am delighted, thrilled, and literally panting to announce my return as a “LinkedIn Engineer” to the Sincere Team Of Deep Genuine Youths. During my incredible time at STODGY, I acquired the skills any young engineer needs before they can write those skills at the bottom of their résumé. To save you all time, try arranging the words Machine Learning, Leadership, Next-Gen, and Connectivity in random order, and you’ll hit on a few. They must be capitalized for those Senior Hiring Managers with poor eyesight.
LinkedIn Engineers know that success isn’t just about what you know; it’s about what you know about how to show who you know. They say the greatest gift is giving-the most generous will share several posts a week of inspiring, high-quality, borderline-human career updates. Using my honed skill of Communication (for which I am endorsed by several well-connected 19-year-olds), I will employ the technique of Analogy:
Life is like a game of Candyland. There is only one track, and success is determined by the number of shortcuts you take. An unfortunate undergraduate is shown the winning path early on, but lacks the Skills or Endorsements to step onto the board. So, he plays an awkward game within the game: Fabricating experiences, partitioning one sentence into four punchy bullet points, supplanting humility with hustle. Reality is a starch too savory for the circlejerk of Candyland. You know you’re playing well when your hands are getting sticky.
So wash them! The beauty of internet networking like LinkedIn is that it reduces the annoying nuance of real life. Thankfully, everyone on LinkedIn is there for the same noble reason: to get ahead. I’ve had honest and boring conversations with peers about their mixed experience with some summer job, only to see a sweetly STODGY post about their fulfilling internship. I’ve seen résumés with thousands of invisible words to get past automated filters. I am invigorated by honest competition.
But before STODGY, I interned at the Center for Youth Networking Intervention and Control. Those at CYNIC understand that an evil’s necessity does not shield it from criticism. While nothing makes me physically vibrate like hitting 500 connections by spam-following people with my last name, it’s true that networking must always remain the means to an end. Sometimes, we realize strangely that it is people we are using as our means. We all use people in our lives, but it is up to us as emerging professionals to decide how. The final square of Candyland is the same shape as all the rest. Thank you, my Network, for helping me get there!
