Overheard a guy at a Scottsdale mixer say he pads his LinkedIn with fake connections

I was at this business after-hours event near Old Town last Thursday, and some guy was bragging to his buddy that he buys 500 followers a month on LinkedIn to look more credible. He even said he's gotten three consulting gigs that way because people assume he's a big deal... I honestly couldn't believe how casual he was about it. It made me wonder how many others are doing the same thing in our local networking circles. Has anyone else run into this kind of fake hype at these events?

2 comments

2 Comments

ben66224d ago

Three months ago I actually checked a guys profile after a Chandler meetup and found 40 obvious bot accounts in his connections list. The dead giveaway is when you see profiles with no photo and 3 connections total, they always have weird names like "Jessica Chen Marketing Solutions." If someone brags about buying followers they're usually not worth networking with anyway.

terryf6224d ago

You ever notice those profiles with like 500+ connections but every single one of them has a default blue background? A buddy of mine added a guy from a Tempe networking thing and within a week got three connection requests from obvious bots with the same profile picture style. He deleted the guy and reported the accounts, but it was kind of unsettling to see how fake it all was.