LinkedIn and Its Overachiever Culture
Not everyone can be on the Forbes 30 Under 30 List, and that’s OK.
Recently, a mentor of mine and I reached a new level of amity — we admitted to each other that we had searched for each other on LinkedIn before meeting.
After disclosing this revelation, we both came to the realization that we spent ungodly amounts of time on the platform, disguising our addiction to comparing ourselves to our associates as professionalism.
Like myself, my mentor admitted to previously going on hour-long LinkedIn crusades, observing skills and degrees that other LinkedIn users had that he did not. When he divulged this, I was stunned. He was the epitome of success in my desired field: he held multiple degrees, was highly esteemed in his field, and held various positions spanning numerous boards.
Everyone gives Instagram props when speaking of platforms that allow users to descend in spirals of comparison, but no one mentions LinkedIn’s ability to do the same. If all the other social media sites are where you go to see everyone having more adventurous lives than you, LinkedIn is where you go to see everyone becoming more successful than you.
Although LinkedIn presents itself as a “boring” professional site, it has established itself in the social media space, amassing a whopping 740 million users worldwide as of February 2021. I, along with many others, am on LinkedIn because of a vague sense of burden or obligation.
“Connections are everything in this field,” my mentor told me. “Accomplishments are great, but connections earn you the positions you want.”
LinkedIn is essentially a giant forum of publicly-accessible resumes. While boasting on Instagram or Twitter can be deemed cringe-worthy, on LinkedIn, an ostentatious job update is always acceptable, expected even. If Instagram is considered shallow, then LinkedIn ideally should be a social network with more depth to it — it is about what truly matters: your career.
Our society as a whole seems to consider those that are pursuing careers in social media as vain, while those pursuing careers in coveted fields are deemed ambitious. And yet, LinkedIn has become just as poisonous as the rest of the social networks to many of us.
What is so deceptive about LinkedIn is how simple and objective it first seems — a straightforward, plain timeline with bullet points of your career and accomplishments. This is a stark contrast to Instagram’s smoke-and-mirror design where we upload our lives’ highlights and nothing else. On LinkedIn, there is the expectation of correctness with no fallacies, just cold-hard facts.
So that’s how Dylan turned out, I thought as his invite to connect popped up on my LinkedIn network. He went from copying off my Pre-Calculus quizzes in 11th grade to being a year away from graduating from a 7-year BS/MD program.
I swallowed the immense envy that was building at the back of my throat and accepted the invite to connect. He messaged me quickly after, asking how I had been and where I lived now. I assumed by now he had combed my profile. I had gone from being an honor student all throughout high school to not even knowing what I wanted to do in college, going for two semesters then dropping out and lying to my parents out of shame for an entire year. I then enrolled at a local community college and began taking courses, finally transferring to my state university. I was sure he had seen my profile — I was ashamed of my path as opposed to his. I was the student expected to have an esteemed future career, constantly being prodded by school advisors and teachers to pursue medicine. Even my own parents still believed I would follow that route until recently, surprised when I told them I was instead interested in pharmaceutical research.
I cannot blame Dylan for how I felt when viewing his profile; he is just presenting his best work and accomplishments, simply filling out a resume. I was feeling shame and envy due to my own expectations of what I thought my future would look like by now; while I was internally beating myself up, Dylan did not seem to skip a beat, asking me for updates on my personal life and expressing sentiments on our old friendship. But, similar to other social networks, LinkedIn is another place where individuals can present a highly selective version of the truth.
It is human nature to compare ourselves to others. This bad habit is not an issue produced by any one platform, although social media platforms are addictive by design. If you are determined to feel badly about yourself, there will always be a way, be it LinkedIn or Instagram or Facebook. LinkedIn is a very solid platform for networking — this is the purpose for which it was conceived. If you can push past that mindset of constantly comparing yourself to others and attempt to use the network for its intended use, it becomes a much better space for opportunities, whether it be jobs or internships.
The first step in recovery from any bad habit is acceptance; maybe now that you have read this piece, you do not feel so alone in your profile-stalking or potential feelings of inadequacy. Remember, we all forge our own paths. You can either continue to wallow in self-pity or you can pull yourself up by your bootstraps and decide that today is a day as good as any to make strides toward your desired career or dream.