Economic analysis

Random dude wants to be your employee on LinkedIn–can you say no?

By Erica Alini

A few weeks ago, I sung LinkedIn’s praises in a piece that reviewed the company’s stellar performance in recent years, and downplayed the importance of its undoubtedly inflated IPO.

Chris Herbert, a Maclean’s reader and founder of a marketing and business development company, left an interesting comment on the story. He too is a fan of LinkedIn, he wrote, but has a quibble with the site: phantom employees. Several people have claimed to be employees at his Mi6 Agency, he told Maclean’s in an interview, when, in fact, they aren’t. It’s an issue other business owners have been complaining about for a while.

Herbert alerted LinkedIn to the problem, and the company has now weeded out the bogus profiles. Asked about Mi6’s case, a LinkedIn Canada spokesperson wrote in an email that the site encourages members to “flag profiles such as these so that we can review and take action.”

That’s all good, but it sounds like it takes some time for LinkedIn to be able to take a look at scam employees and bring them down. Wouldn’t it be better to have a feature that lets employers confirm that a person is actually working for them? If someone claims to be my friend on Facebook, the site asks me whether it’s true or not. Shouldn’t LinkedIn do the same?