I am always flipping between seeing LinkedIn as a useful tool and experiencing it as flea market. But one place it should not be used for is to send terse rejection notes.
Meet Kelly Blazek. Or at least this might be one of the few places you might now see her. Following a particularly terse and some would say nasty rejection of a unsolicited request to connect on LinkedIn, Kelly appears to have removed all her online social media and network accounts. Not very good for someone with the “Communicator of the Year” title. Read the full story here.
This highlights the damage that can rapidly happen when you do something online that previously might only have been passed around by hand to a few people. A quick Google search of Kelly now finds that 8 of the first page 10 results are now about this furor versus her job bank business and probably good work that she had previously done.
The damage is huge and the road to recovery is going to be very long.
I have always said if you would not be happy having your grandmother read it or it appearing on the front page of your local newspaper then do not post it, send it or comment on it via technology.