He is the founder of Magnify Leadership and Development, a training consulting company with global experience in management/leadership and executive email list sales force effectiveness training; the author of Magnify Change Leadership: A Practical Guide to Leading Teams in Times of Change; and a recognized training consultant. If I were a recruiter, I'd build the biggest network I could, on LinkedIn or otherwise. After all, there's zero downside to being able to view, and executive email list reach, a massive number of candidates when your job is locating talent. But for the rest of us, it's easy to get the notions "a big network" and "a strong network" confused. The question to ask executive email list yourself is "could I recommend this person, and could he recommend me?" If not, the principal value in any individual LinkedIn connection will be your ability to view his network (and vice versa).

That's not a bad thing, but it would be a shame to executive email list mistake that kind of visibility for influence. Amassing connections can become a kind of addiction, but withdrawal will kick in when these near-strangers begin to ask you to vouch for them executive email list to your dearest friends. I got religion on this item in an instant last summer, when a fellow executive email list asked me to send a friend of mine a spam my invitation to his business conference. "I can't do it," I wrote, "it's purely a marketing message." The gentleman's return message essentially ripped my executive email list head off, affirming my initial gut reaction that his request was an improper one.

Don't hesitate to stand up for yourself and for executive email list your friends when sketchy requests come down the pike (and they will). If you pass along every bit of deck that finds you, your trusted friends will start to doubt you, and that's a far worse fate than executive email list having to write to another LinkedIn user, "I'm sorry, but I don't feel comfortable passing this on." LinkedIn's Find Colleagues feature allows you to find old workmates and send unmediated connection executive email list requests to them, a boon if you've lost their email addresses over the years. Unfortunately, it's easy to abuse the feature by listing false employers or dates of employment on your executive email list profile.