Has the LinkedIn culture at CMC become toxic?
It’s that time of year again. No, not pumpkin spice season or Oktoberfest. It’s time for the obligatory fall internship LinkedIn posts, where college students—particularly those at Claremont McKenna—advertise their new positions for the semester.
The pressure is on: find a job—not just any job, but one that takes you on the next step of your hundred-step career ladder over the next ten years—and tell all of your peers, professors, and networking connections about it online. Whether on-campus or off-campus, paid or unpaid, internship or fellowship, or “just a life update” for those who’ve graduated, the start of the semester marks a flood of notifications about students’ career updates. While it can be fun to share our accomplishments on social media, have we become too “linked in” to each other’s professional lives?
I don’t mean to downplay networking or resume building. The career culture on campus is the reason many of us chose CMC in the first place—our school is notorious for its pre-professional slant and its return on investment. The Soll Center for Student Opportunity provides excellent opportunities to learn how to apply for jobs and build a professional network. We can walk into the glass-paned office to get instructions on initiating coffee chats, formatting our resumes, and writing outstanding cover letters. The Center designates $1,000 to each student per academic year to attend conferences and visit graduate schools (if you didn’t know that, now you do!). We are fortunate to have such great resources on our campus.
Still, I am beginning to wonder if the LinkedIn culture at CMC has become toxic. I’m guilty of it, too. I posted when I got my first college job. My first summer internship. My first job in Washington DC. Part of it was truly networking—I’ve met some great people along the way who are genuinely interested in what I’m up to and where I’m at. But I’ll be the first to admit that for the most part, I was excited to get likes and comments from my friends on my latest acceptance into a coveted position.
I’m all for networking, but in a recent conversation with my supervisor on the Hill, we discussed horizontal networking—building professional connections with our peers at work and in school. Is that not just… making friends? I suppose it is, but calling it horizontal or lateral networking adds unnecessary stress and reduces friendship to a transactional relationship. Every day in Washington I get emails advertising “intern networking” happy hours hosted by universities in the area. You show up, mingle about work over free pizza, and share your LinkedIn profile with anyone who will listen in the hope of a follow. Unfortunately, I can’t even remember the names of the juniors at Harvard and BU I connected with this summer. I doubt whether these events or making those online connections are really worth it.
Like all social media platforms, LinkedIn is curated. When we post about the end of our summer internships come fall, we don’t write about the time our boss yelled at us to fix a memo or the meetings that bored us to tears. We share the happy things, like our nice intern cohort or the cool project we led and presented to management. Reading perfectly-phrased posts naturally leads to unrealistic expectations for our own jobs, stirring the perpetual insecurity that we are constantly behind our peers.
In my short four months in Washington, I’ve already learned one of many hard truths about this city—the first question out of someone’s mouth when they meet you is, “What do you do?” And they’re not talking about your hobbies. While it’s not as bad as New York, young people are always looking for their next bigger and better job, chasing any connection that will lead them there.
My experience in Washington brings me back to Claremont and our school’s LinkedIn obsession. Professional work is important, but life is too short to compare ourselves to our friends’ job postings online.
So, as we navigate this season of LinkedIn updates, let’s remember we are all at CMC for a reason. Each of us can succeed regardless of where our friends work this term. The world needs investment bankers at Goldman Sachs and consultants at Deloitte, but there are also thousands of paths that may work better for you. As cheesy as it sounds, I hope we all trust that our unique interests and journeys will lead us where we’re meant to be.
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