There’s a saying making the rounds online that LinkedIn has become a mass grave of ghost jobs and AI-generated content. The idea behind it is that Easy Apply jobs receive no responses, AI slop is flooding our feeds, and connections ghost each other in the inbox. In a quite meta fashion, the saying has become a recurring topic on the very platform it critiques.
Recently, I published a post about how my LinkedIn green flag is that “I always respond to messages from my connections.” I called out the behavior that we had become too accustomed to on LinkedIn, of accepting connection requests but ignoring the DMs that follow, dubbing it the “accept and ignore” culture. In my post, I argued that people shouldn’t have to do a whole song and dance—a “Shakespearean sonnet” is what I called it—to warrant a response. And for a while, LinkedIn came back to life with actual human interactions.
Slowly at first, professionals outside my network started engaging with the post, sharing in the comment section their frustration with being ignored. Then, the official LinkedIn Guide to Creating account liked the post, and it blew up.
The comments revealed far more than agreement. Some thanked me for putting words to a frustration they had accepted as normal. Others admitted they already feel anxious every time they reach out to someone new. Many lamented that networking had become increasingly transactional and AI-driven, pointing out the very real need to protect themselves from spam, scams, and harassment. Underneath all these reactions, though, was a common desire for LinkedIn to feel human again.
At a time when success in the job market feels impossible, people are looking to LinkedIn, which is for many primarily a job hunting tool, as a place where one conversation can change the course of one’s career. People reach out despite the deafening silence and wade through the AI slop in their feed because they hear those stories of how a friend of a friend reached out to a CEO and got an internship with one message. With everything becoming increasingly automated, people are still hoping that there is a human at the receiving end of their message.
I am one of those people. During my MBA, LinkedIn was an essential tool for navigating recruiting. When I was looking for a role in product marketing, I reached out to someone in that role at one of my dream companies. Vincent’s response came three months later, but it came nonetheless. It led to a call that led to a referral that ultimately became a real mentoring relationship. We are still in touch to this day even though I didn’t end up working at his company.
This was one of many examples I have where one message from or to a stranger led to an actual relationship that enriched my life. I commented on Kat’s post, and now she’s one of my most trusted friends, though we have never met in person. I reached out to Jia Ming, and months later, when he launched a newsletter, I ended up guest writing for it.
Yet, even with the possibility of these meaningful connections, the sad truth is that the bar has gotten so low that a common courtesy response to a genuine message is now as elusive as a job offer in this market.
Because of the “accept and ignore” phenomenon, many users have turned to LinkedIn creators and influencers who tout best practices for cold outreach. According to them, one has to be direct, so dispense with the “I hope this message finds you well” formality. One also has to prove value in 300 characters or less. And, most importantly, one has to prove one is human, so the message should be legible but not polished, preferably all in lower case.
In other words, the best practices of cold outreach are the LinkedIn equivalent of America Ferrera’s Barbie monologue about how it is impossible to be a woman.
It’s understandable why people are ignoring messages. Generative AI has made mass outreach that feigns personalization so easy that it is almost impossible to respond to every message we receive. Add in the irrelevant messages and sometimes it is easier to mark everything as read than to go through each one and decide whether it warrants a response or not. But when people ignore their messages, they miss out on the best LinkedIn has to offer: possibility.
The magic of LinkedIn happens when we are open to what is outside our immediate lanes. I have had coffee chats with founders, given advice to students, and learned about industries I never knew about, all because someone replied to my message or I replied to theirs. That is why I accept connection requests from strangers, so I can learn from them and make my world a little bigger.
Personally, if I accept your request to connect, I will take the time to read your message and respond. Even that message asking if my company needed marketing services received a polite, “No, I don’t own a company” from me. That is my rule because coming from a marketing background, I know I’d overthink and even revamp my entire outreach strategy if I don’t hear back. So to give them peace of mind, I do reply to unrelated pitches.
Everyone has their own rule about responding to outreach, or they should. The issue is that we’ve spent years telling people how to send the perfect message but almost no time asking what responsibility the receiver has.
As someone who has spent the past year chronically on LinkedIn, posting weekly, and engaging with posts, I’ve developed a few simple rules for navigating the flood of outreach that comes with being active on the platform.
How to respond to messages on LinkedIn
Going through the inbox can feel like a chore when a lot of what we are receiving consists of sales pitches and AI-generated messages. To make it feel less tedious, dedicate just 10 minutes each day to go through your inbox. Start from the oldest message that has been collecting digital dust, and read every message you can in those 10 minutes. Read them in full.
If a student or job seeker is reaching out about your industry or company, take the time to respond, even if it’s a simple “I’m unable to help.” Many of us remember being that person who is looking to break into an industry and has no clue how to do it, so think about your younger self and pay it forward.
If the message is a sales pitch that is uninteresting or irrelevant to you, you have three options. Say, “Not for me”; remove or block the connection; or ignore the message. Just know that if you ignore it, you’ll likely get a follow-up. Rejection is part of any salesperson’s job, so they do expect it, and at some point, they will get the hint when enough time has passed without a response.
Of course, not everyone’s LinkedIn experience is the same. Women and other marginalized professionals often face harassment or inappropriate messages, and in those cases, do not respond. Instead, use the block and report features generously because LinkedIn should be a safe and professional community for everyone. This advice goes for scams, spam, and messages sent in bad faith.
Not every message deserves a response, but a genuine attempt at connection deserves your consideration. Only by taking the time to read the message can you make that distinction.
Depending on how many connections you have or how long you have forsaken your inbox, you likely won’t finish going through your DMs and responding to the ones you want in one 10-minute sitting. That’s okay. Do another 10 minutes the next day. The point is that we are putting in the work to build and maintain the relationships with the people we have connected with online the same way we would in real life.
LinkedIn may have become a graveyard of sorts, but I have also found some of my closest friends and coolest opportunities through it. Professional norms aren’t dictated by LinkedIn. They are set by those of us who use it every day. When someone sends you a request to connect and you decide to accept it, know that you are opening the lines of communication. That person can now reach out, and there is likely a message coming your way. Be open to it and assume positive intent. Don’t be that person who attends a networking event only to refuse to talk to anyone.
If you don’t want to connect, why accept the request?