I recently spent twenty minutes staring at a draft of a LinkedIn message, my thumb hovering over the ‘send’ button, feeling like an absolute fraud. I was trying to reach out to a Senior Director at a logistics firm—let’s call it Maersk, because it was Maersk—and every sentence I wrote felt like I was trying to sell him a used car with a rolled-back odometer. It was performative. It was stiff. It was, in a word, cringey.
We have all been there. You want to expand your ‘reach,’ but the moment you start typing, you turn into a corporate chatbot that’s been fed a diet of bad self-help books and GaryVee clips. It’s exhausting. And the worst part is, we know it doesn’t work. I actually audited my own inbox last month. I looked at 127 cold outreach messages I’d received over the last year and realized I’d only replied to exactly 3 of them. That is a 2.3% success rate. If those were sales numbers, you’d be fired. Yet, we keep doing it because we’re told that’s how ‘networking’ happens.
That time I made a total fool of myself in a VP’s inbox
Back in 2019, I was desperate to move into a more strategic role. I found a VP at a tech company in Austin—I won’t name them, but they make very expensive project management software—and decided I was going to ‘network’ my way into their orbit. I sent a message that was four paragraphs long. I used the word ‘synergy’ twice. I offered to ‘provide value’ by sharing a PDF of a project I’d worked on that had nothing to do with their industry. It was pathetic.
They didn’t just ignore me. They actually blocked me. I know this because when I went to check if they’d seen it two days later, their profile was a ‘LinkedIn Member’ ghost. I felt like I’d walked into a high-end party and accidentally spilled red wine on the host’s white rug within five seconds of arriving. I was trying too hard to be professional that I forgot how to be a person. What I mean is—actually, let me put it differently. I was treating that VP like a trophy to be won rather than a human who probably just wanted to eat their lunch in peace without a stranger asking for ‘fifteen minutes of their time.’
Anyway, I learned my lesson. Mostly. I still get it wrong sometimes, but that failure forced me to look at why the platform feels so slimy. It’s because we’ve been taught that every interaction needs to be a transaction. We’re told to ‘build a personal brand,’ which is just a fancy way of saying ‘turn your personality into a product.’ I hate it. I genuinely think the ‘Top Voice’ badges are just participation trophies for people who have too much time on their hands. I actually trust people less when I see that gold badge on their profile. It’s a red flag for me. It says, ‘I spend more time talking about work than actually doing it.’
The data doesn’t lie: nobody wants your ‘value’
Here is a take that I know people will disagree with, but I’m going to say it anyway: stop trying to ‘add value’ to people you don’t know. It’s arrogant. Who are you to think you have something valuable for a stranger who is ten years ahead of you in their career? When you say ‘I’d love to add value,’ what the other person hears is ‘I am about to send you a 40-page whitepaper you didn’t ask for.’
The most successful connections I’ve ever made started with a comment on a post that had absolutely nothing to do with business.
I tested this. Over three months, I sent two types of messages. Type A was the standard ‘I’d love to connect and see how we can help each other’ nonsense. Type B was a specific, one-sentence observation about a niche topic they’d actually posted about—like the specific way their company handles remote onboarding or a weird bug in their software. Type A got zero replies. Type B got a 40% response rate. It turns out, people like being noticed for the work they actually do, not for the title they hold.
The 3-step fix that actually feels human
If you want to stop feeling like a creep, you have to change the goal. The goal isn’t a ‘connection.’ The goal is a conversation. Here is how I do it now, and it’s saved my sanity.
- Step 1: The 15-Minute Ghost Rule. Spend 15 minutes a week looking at the ‘Recent Activity’ tab of people you actually admire. Don’t send a request. Just read. If they post something, and you actually have a thought—not a ‘Great post!’ but a real thought—leave a comment. Do this for three weeks before you ever hit ‘Connect.’ It builds a trail.
- Step 2: The Specific, Non-Transactional Compliment. When you finally do reach out, make it about something they did, not something you want. I once got a reply from a C-suite executive because I told them I loved the font choice on their new landing page. It was a weirdly specific thing to notice, and it started a ten-minute chat about typography. That’s it. No ‘ask.’ No ‘let’s grab coffee.’ Just a human moment.
- Step 3: The ‘No-Pressure’ Exit. Always give them an out. I end my messages with something like, ‘No need to reply to this, just wanted to send that over.’ Paradoxically, this makes people more likely to reply because you’ve removed the social debt of the interaction.
I might be wrong about this, but I also think you should stop wearing suits in your profile pictures. Unless you’re a lawyer or a funeral director, it just looks like you’re trying to hide something. I changed my photo from a professional headshot to a grainy photo of me at a brewery, and my message acceptance rate went up. People want to work with people, not avatars of ‘professionalism.’
The ‘uncomfortable’ truth about LinkedIn’s loudest voices
I’m going to be blunt: I actively tell my friends to avoid following the big ‘Career Coaches’ on the platform. Most of them are selling a dream they haven’t actually lived. I spent exactly $249 on a ‘LinkedIn Growth’ course back in 2021—I was in a weird place, okay?—and it was the biggest waste of money in my life. It taught me how to use ‘hooks’ and ‘line breaks’ to trick the algorithm. I tracked my engagement for 90 days after using their ‘proven’ templates, and my actual meaningful DMs dropped by 14%. I was getting more likes, sure, but they were from other people using the same templates. It was a circle-jerk of bots and ‘hustle’ culture. Total lie.
I refuse to recommend any of those ‘growth hackers.’ They are the reason the platform feels like a digital version of a shopping mall that’s 90% kiosks selling phone cases. If you want to build a network, go talk to the people who are actually in the trenches doing the work, not the people talking about the work. They are usually the ones with 400 followers and no ‘Top Voice’ badge. Those are the people who actually have the power to hire you or refer you.
I don’t know if LinkedIn will ever not be cringey. It’s built into the DNA of a site where your boss, your mom, and your high school rival are all watching you at the same time. It’s a weird environment. But I’ve found that the more I treat it like a messy, imperfect pub and less like a sterile boardroom, the more I actually enjoy being there. Or at least, I don’t want to throw my phone in a river after using it. Which is a win, I guess.
Does anyone else feel like they’re wearing an itchy sweater every time they log in? Or is it just me?
