Funny

LinkedIn notifies you on your home page there if someone new has joined who shares a company or school in common with you.  Thus there’s a regular turnover of new Bridgewater State College people.  There would probably be a regular selection of Stream International or Corporate Software people flagged, had I listed them individually rather than as Corporate Software/Stream International.  Plus it’s an exact match, so if you add an Inc. or leave off International, you’re a different company for people matching.

Today I got a notification of someone new at Tranti Systems and boy did it bring back memories.  My first contact ever was with the unlikable and seemingly incompetent HR and general admin person, in the form of an answering machine message left in a bored, “I want to be anywhere but here” tone that pronounced the company name so slurred that I told my friend Adam it was Transi Systems.  I happened to talk to him before calling them back.  He corrected my misunderstanding of the slurred name.

That’s who joined LinkedIn.  I’d forgotten her last name, and really not given her much thought beyond periodically using her as an example of surrounding yourself by the wrong people and giving them stock in the early days of a business ultimately going awry.

At the time I interviewed and all, I had no idea she was accidentally the second or third biggest stockholder.  I just knew she struck me as not the brightest bulb, and didn’t know some elementary information one would expect to ask and have answered by HR.

My first impulse was “no way” to linking her, and I came back around to that after toying with the idea of inviting her just to see if she would accept.  It’s just that LinkedIn connections are meant to be positive or neutral.  Why link someone when I’m not sure I could find anything good to say about her?

The cool thing is that seeing her lead me to find someone good I worked with there, who left off Systems and hadn’t shown up in the list with the others.  That and it brought back memories.  And heck, she at least had sense enough to participate in pre-internet local company resume exchanges, which is how they found me.  That’s something.

Posted by on 12/28 at 01:47 PM

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