BREAKING: User Appears In LinkedIn Search

Anecdotal evidence suggests previous cases have occurred.

Jerusalem, October 14 – A social network aimed at facilitating and tightening connections among career-minded professionals sent one of its members an e-mail alert today, informing her that someone, somewhere, had queried the network’s database about something, and that as a consequence, her name appeared in the results. The-e-mail did not inform said member of the terms involved in the query, the relevance of her name to the query terms, or how many other members’ names came up as a result of the same query.

LinkedIn’s automated alert system performed as expected Thursday when a user in London entered a term in the search field of either the company’s website or its mobile app. Among the search results appeared the name and contact information of local freelance content writer Brickinda Wohl. Wohl, however, who told reporters she welcomes interest in her work and the professional opportunities such interest often signals, sought to downplay expectations.

“I am trying to contain my excitement,” disclosed the 32-year-old single mother of two. “It’s not every day that LinkedIn sends- well, check that, it actually is every day. Still, I’m working on not counting my chickens just yet. I know from personal experience that my name coming up in the search results doesn’t immediately or automatically translate into lucrative work. Without knowing how many other people’s names also came up, I can’t just jump to the conclusion that I’m going to get a message today offering me a job or a contract. It’s possible dozens, or hundreds, maybe thousands, of others also appeared there, and it’ll take weeks, at least, for them to contact me.”

Anecdotal evidence suggests previous cases have occurred in which LinkedIn alerted users that their names came up in a search, but confirmation of such incidents has proved elusive. Scant documentation of those events exists, if they occurred at all, says researcher Spamm Folder. “It’s hard to pin down occurrences of this nature,” he acknowledged. “It’s not the kind of thing people will save; they just delete such messages for some reason. I’ve also seen cases in which LinkedIn users apply the ‘don’t send me e-mail alerts’ setting on their accounts, which means this phenomenon might be even more frequent that we suspect.”

Mr. Folder did observe that if the previous occurrence can be confirmed of someone’s name showing up in a LinkedIn search, that would make the phenomenon more common than anyone finding an actual job through LinkedIn.

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