To Connect or Not

So here is how I decide with whom to connect:
• If people write me a nice personal message saying why they want to be a connection, I briefly look at their title and background. If they seem interesting, I accept.
• If the person seems amazing from their title — and his or her profile shows a record of great accomplishments — I accept.
• If he or she is a student at one of the schools I teach at, I accept.
• If the person worked with me at a previous company and I vaguely remember the name, I accept.

Vivek Wadhwa, a columnist for The Washington Post and Bloomberg Businessweek, has a post on LinkedIn about who he decides to add to his LinkedIn network. LinkedIn founder Reid Hoffman’s advice is to only add people to LinkedIn who you personally know, but Wadhwa created his own system of deciding who to add to his network.

Personally, I’m not much of a LinkedIn user, but I do occasionally get invitations to connect from strangers. I don’t accept invitations from people I don’t know who send a generic message. I do accept if they have written a personal note explaining why they wanted to connect. So, from what I gather from Wadhwa’s post and my own behavior, taking the extra effort to write a note helps. Breaking news: Putting in effort will lead to positive results.

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