SINGAPORE: Years ago, I hired an intern who lacked the technical skills for the job. But they made up for it with insatiable curiosity, unwavering humility and emotional intelligence that most seasoned professionals could only aspire to.
They not only thrived in the internship but went on to secure a full-time role at the company.
The takeaway? Sometimes, the right hires have the wrong resumes.
This anecdote is completely fictional.
But today, the signature humblebragging, hyperbolic language and ChatGPT cadence would be right at home – and would have done amazing numbers – on LinkedIn. It may even be plagiarised wholesale by users seeking the same viral engagement on the professional networking platform.
Let’s not forget the comments section, where a bulk of responses would likely also resemble an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot's syntax and style, paraphrasing the post with little added insight.
Pressed for time to type out a few words? It's LinkedIn’s suggested responses, also generated by AI, to the rescue: "Love this." "Insightful." "Very helpful."
The increased use of AI tools to craft entire posts and comments is among newly prevalent features of the LinkedIn experience today. And it's led to users bemoaning the rise of engagement-boosting tactics and dearth of genuine interactions.
Even a straightforward Google search for more details on LinkedIn's AI-suggested comments instead produced a slew of Reddit threads from flummoxed users about the platform’s current state.
“Out of genuine curiosity, is it just me or is the LinkedIn feed getting as cringey as TikTok feed these days?”
“What the hell is happening to LinkedIn?”
“Is LinkedIn done?”
LinkedIn didn’t always attract such flak. The platform has been a crucial tool for anyone from youths still in school to seasoned executives to network and build their “personal brand”.
Personal branding – the process of intentionally creating and managing the image or perception others have of you, particularly in professional contexts – started gaining prominence as a way to stand out in a competitive job market.
Or on LinkedIn, when it was still a largely formal space.
Former investment banker Eric Sim started posting in 2015 – about how he flunked mathematics in school. It wasn’t yet the norm to publish personal stories on LinkedIn, but he took to it naturally as “failing and being rejected is part of my life”.
“You must choose a topic that you can write every week for five years. Writing about failure is something that I can write about for a very long time,” said the 55-year-old.
The speaker and executive coach believes his strategy has attracted the “right” community. Mr Sim has around 2.8 million followers today, many of whom he says want to learn about how he overcame failure. He is also the author of a business psychology book Small Actions: Leading Your Career To Big Success.
LinkedIn Top Voice Eric Sim believes he has found a community by staying true to himself. (Photo: Eric Sim)
Similarly, mental health organisation Calm Collective Asia's co-founder and CEO Sabrina Ooi started actively posting “things that were blurring the lines between professional and personal” during the COVID-19 pandemic's early days.
The 35-year-old saw LinkedIn as a blog, due to features that encouraged longer-form entries. A regular status update today, for instance, can take up to 3,000 characters.
“I’m also a trained marketer, so I wanted to make sure that whatever I’m sharing was going to be relevant for the reader in a way that was tied back to professional growth. Because a lot of personal stuff affects the way that we grow professionally,” she added.
Around the same time, Ms Ooi saw other users becoming more willing to open up too. In 2021, when Calm Collective Asia ran a LinkedIn campaign titled Redefining Failure, it attracted “quite a lot of personal sharing that was genuine and authentic”, including from politicians Alvin Tan and Jamus Lim.
Sabrina Ooi, co-founder and CEO of mental health organisation Calm Collective Asia, has noticed the negative shift in her LinkedIn experience. (Photo: Sabrina Ooi)
At a time when major consulting firms were mostly the dominant source of insights on workplace culture, LinkedIn “emerged as a very refreshing” alternative, said Associate Professor Natalie Pang from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) communications and new media department.
“It was a unique platform just for people to talk about work and what it means to them in their context and their personal experiences. People got to hear more from the ground in terms of what it means to work, what does good leadership look like and so on.”
The increasingly personal content posted on LinkedIn also reflected the pandemic’s blurring of work-life boundaries in the real world, Assoc Prof Pang believes.
For their content, Mr Sim and Ms Ooi were eventually awarded a Top Voice badge.
According to LinkedIn, it reviews content on the platform to identify Top Voices, who are “a select group of global experts, leaders, changemakers, public figures and innovators”.
Top Voices is a so-called "invite-only" programme. Those deemed worthy receive a prestigious blue badge on their profile.
I, too, received a Top Voice badge in May 2023. I suspect it’s because, like Ms Ooi, I treated LinkedIn like a blog, where my professional updates often contained personal, uncensored thoughts.
It’s easy for such casual content to stand out on a supposedly corporate platform where being your true self, just like in a real-life workplace, is rare.
Also, I truly enjoyed being on LinkedIn.
But by October 2024, I no longer did. AI-generated content constantly invaded my user experience, no matter how many posts I hid or people I blocked and/or reported.
I decided LinkedIn was headed in a direction misaligned with my personal brand, and asked to opt out of the Top Voice programme.
The blue badge on my profile inadvertently associated me with a platform that seemed to champion virality over value – the opposite of what I stood for.
A few days later my badge was removed, and I let out a breath I didn't realise I was holding.
In hindsight, the writing was on the wall – or all over my newsfeed.
Ask ChatGPT to write a story in "LinkedIn style” and the AI chatbot will know what you mean.
That’s because users' approach to the platform has become so recognisable that it’s possible to recreate, NUS’ Assoc Prof Pang pointed out.
On LinkedIn itself, it's increasingly common to come across satire of standard LinkedIn content – although, like all good satire, part of the joy is seeing some miss the point. There just happens to be more of such people on LinkedIn, at least from my observation.
There even exists a “countermovement against the distinct LinkedIn voice”, Assoc Prof Pang added, referring to the Reddit community r/LinkedInLunatics – with over 722,000 members – that highlights “insufferable” LinkedIn content like “virtue signalling and cringeworthy titles”.
LinkedIn Top Voice Juliana Chan has termed this distinct voice “LinkedInese”.
The LinkedIn coach and founder of a LinkedIn masterclass called Find Your Superpower is broadly known for her personal career insights.
But in December, she went viral for a different reason. She parodied the typical LinkedIn “inspirational guru” in a short video – the first of what would be a series translating phrases into LinkedInese.
In the clip, Dr Chan, with a deadpan expression, translates “I took a nap” into LinkedIn speak: “Today, I indulged in a transformative afternoon reset. It is an incredible investment into building up energy, creativity and focus. Sometimes, a brief pause is all it takes to come back stronger than before. How about you?”
The 42-year-old was inspired by the worst archetype she sees on LinkedIn: The people who are constantly either “humbled" or "delighted”.
“The reason why those posts are cringey is because they’re actually very self-centred. They’re very low-value posts,” she said.
Yet people continue to share such LinkedIn content, completely earnestly. The platform, by virtue of its features, is meant to “celebrate and applaud you, and say you’re insightful”, said Assoc Prof Pang.
“Quite often when people post, they’re writing to expect a response. They’re performing in return for something – a response, an affirmation – and you can expect this reciprocity on LinkedIn.”
In a bid to boost their engagement through commenting, some users have also taken to using AI tools to generate responses to others' posts. Or they just use LinkedIn's suggested prompts.
The latter has resulted in Calm Collective's Ms Ooi seeing “a lot of bot-like activity” take the place of more genuine interactions on her posts about mental health. For instance, 10 to 15 different people may leave the same comment, as though they were "programmed" to do so.
Such interactions feel "fake" and make her “a bit uncomfortable”, so she's stopped scrolling through her feed as much.
“The integration of AI, the usage of AI and the way we interact on LinkedIn (now) has really removed that human connection (that was once there). I think of AI as artificial intimacy,” she added.
Dr Juliana Chan, founder of LinkedIn masterclass Find Your Superpower, laments the rise of engagement pods but still believes it's possible to find a genuine community on LinkedIn. (Photo: Juliana Chan)
Then there are engagement pods on LinkedIn – groups of users, usually from similar industries, who have agreed to like, comment on and/or repost each other’s content. Some of these pods have over 1,000 members and even charge membership fees.
Dr Chan explained that pods use software tools to figure out posts that are trending on various social media platforms, including LinkedIn. These posts have a “hook” and a “template”, and are occasionally accompanied by simple illustrations. And they are proven to work.
“What happens is suddenly in that week, everyone’s posts would look the same," she said. “There are different topics, like about a toxic boss or a company that hates you, but all have the same structure. And they all ‘like’ it in the engagement pod, almost like a cartel."
As the goal is to boost engagement, regardless of quality, the result is an influx of what appears to be the platform's most popular content format right now: Generic advice listicles usually conveyed via a carousel, or career-related platitudes plastered onto a billboard.
Screenshot of a LinkedIn post with almost 4,000 likes, 700 comments and 300 reposts.
Yet, in a LinkedIn blog post on content that users are recommended to avoid, the platform discourages “participating in efforts to artificially boost visibility, such as joining engagement pods”.
LinkedIn did not directly address CNA's queries on what it plans to do about specific issues – including the rise of engagement pods, sloppy AI-generated content and bot-like behaviour – that have affected the “authentic sharing of ideas” it once fostered.
But a spokesperson maintained that “authenticity is key to keeping our LinkedIn community safe, trusted and professional”.
This starts with “knowing who you’re connecting with and the companies and jobs you’re considering”, said LinkedIn, pointing to free verification features to help people make more informed decisions about who they interact with.
A LinkedIn blog post from 2023 also outlines its "responsible AI principles": To advance economic opportunity, uphold trust, promote fairness and inclusion, provide transparency and embrace accountability.
LinkedIn is also “not about creation for the sake of entertainment”, the spokesperson said. Rather, it is invested in “surfacing insights, news and knowledge content that spark conversations between people on work topics you care about”.
Some may argue that LinkedIn is just one platform. But Assoc Prof Pang believes LinkedIn, like most social media networks, reflects our desires, fears and even metrics for success.
The difference with LinkedIn is that it specifically simulates the workplace, where success is typically quantifiable – and hence pursuable and attainable.
“When it comes to work, there are distinct recipes and measurements for what we’d consider success, such as taking on more work,” said the NUS researcher.
“So, the desire to imitate a certain content style on LinkedIn, which people have seen succeed, reflects the real-life behaviour (to model what others deem successful).
"Because on LinkedIn, it’s about how many likes or reactions you have; whether you have a Top Voice badge; your number of followers; how many viewers have seen your post.”
Marketing consultant Adrian Tan also believes people "will continue to mirror what works publicly and find ways to optimise it".
Unfortunately, this means "you will have all these people riding this wave to teach more people how to do it in that way", the 45-year-old said.
"Whatever things you can't stand on LinkedIn right now, are going to be worse."
Screenshot of a submission on subreddit r/LinkedInLunatics, which highlights "insufferable" LinkedIn content.
And in another portent of real life imitating the online, the "office influencer" may soon be an official job scope, at least according to 2025 workplace ideas and trends released by none other than LinkedIn.
“With Gen Z's unrelenting demand for brand authenticity and personal connection, more employers are poised to hire in-house influencers in 2025 to give their online presence a relatable touch,” said a LinkedIn News Asia report.
Some users are hopeful the platform can still bounce back from its current state.
Ms Ooi, for one, believes LinkedIn still "democratises the playing field for people anywhere in the world, no matter their socioeconomic status, their access to privilege or opportunities".
She recalled how it was “very validating to know that my voice matters”, when she received her Top Voice badge.
"(The platform) gives people a space to have a voice. That’s what I still love about LinkedIn, and I do want to see that continuing.”
When it comes to AI, since there’s no escaping its proliferation, Assoc Prof Pang hopes LinkedIn can go beyond a set of principles to prescribe guidelines and standards for its use.
Specifically, users "should have to declare that they’re using AI, or even just be open about how they have used AI in the creation of their post", she suggested.
Mr Sim, the former investment banker turned speaker and coach, believes “you can use AI but it cannot smell like AI”.
He uses ChatGPT to check his writing for major errors, but opts for his own “less sophisticated” words to keep his own voice, especially if the chatbot recommends “a word I don’t know or normally use”.
On the other hand, Dr Chan is stricter about not using ChatGPT or any generative AI tool at all.
In her LinkedIn coaching, she tells participants she would rather read “someone with spelling and grammatical errors” than a “perfectly written, cringey ChatGPT-esque post that I know clearly isn’t written by you”.
But it takes a while to convince some.
After all, there are users who come to her to hit a certain follower target – a goal that she disapproves.
“If your end point is fame itself, then you’ll be very sorely disappointed, because when you reach the other end, it’s hollow,” she said, having learnt the hard way.
Such clout-chasing tendencies could be dampened if LinkedIn clamps down on or at least "devalues" engagement pods, said Dr Chan.
It could also reduce or stop automated bots, or downrank users on the algorithm if they’re guilty of such content, she suggested.
Mr Tan, the marketing consultant, has a more realistic view. "If somehow doing it this way helps LinkedIn make more money, there's no reason for them to reverse," he said.
Individuals can still make themselves heard, however. He pointed to what I'd done by "openly rejecting" my Top Voice badge. I’d also posted on LinkedIn about my decision.
"That's another signal (to LinkedIn)," said Mr Tan. "It's just whether they want to start looking at all these voices and try to make any adjustments."
It is possible to build a personal brand and stay true to yourself. Authenticity, to Mr Sim, means he's the “same person” to people he's just met online as well as those he's known for decades.
“Sometimes it's very easy to put up a persona online; but in real life, you are a different person … Whichever industry you are in, it's better to be the same person, then you don't have to act. You can just be yourself," he said.
Some have told Dr Chan that they fear others wouldn’t like their words if they wrote authentically, sans AI.
But in my experience, that's a win. Better to be disliked for your personality than be liked for your persona.
Agree?
Continue reading...
They not only thrived in the internship but went on to secure a full-time role at the company.
The takeaway? Sometimes, the right hires have the wrong resumes.
This anecdote is completely fictional.
But today, the signature humblebragging, hyperbolic language and ChatGPT cadence would be right at home – and would have done amazing numbers – on LinkedIn. It may even be plagiarised wholesale by users seeking the same viral engagement on the professional networking platform.
Let’s not forget the comments section, where a bulk of responses would likely also resemble an artificial intelligence (AI) chatbot's syntax and style, paraphrasing the post with little added insight.
Pressed for time to type out a few words? It's LinkedIn’s suggested responses, also generated by AI, to the rescue: "Love this." "Insightful." "Very helpful."
The increased use of AI tools to craft entire posts and comments is among newly prevalent features of the LinkedIn experience today. And it's led to users bemoaning the rise of engagement-boosting tactics and dearth of genuine interactions.
Even a straightforward Google search for more details on LinkedIn's AI-suggested comments instead produced a slew of Reddit threads from flummoxed users about the platform’s current state.
“Out of genuine curiosity, is it just me or is the LinkedIn feed getting as cringey as TikTok feed these days?”
“What the hell is happening to LinkedIn?”
“Is LinkedIn done?”
THE BIRTHPLACE OF PERSONAL BRANDING
LinkedIn didn’t always attract such flak. The platform has been a crucial tool for anyone from youths still in school to seasoned executives to network and build their “personal brand”.
Related:
Personal branding – the process of intentionally creating and managing the image or perception others have of you, particularly in professional contexts – started gaining prominence as a way to stand out in a competitive job market.
Or on LinkedIn, when it was still a largely formal space.
Former investment banker Eric Sim started posting in 2015 – about how he flunked mathematics in school. It wasn’t yet the norm to publish personal stories on LinkedIn, but he took to it naturally as “failing and being rejected is part of my life”.
“You must choose a topic that you can write every week for five years. Writing about failure is something that I can write about for a very long time,” said the 55-year-old.
The speaker and executive coach believes his strategy has attracted the “right” community. Mr Sim has around 2.8 million followers today, many of whom he says want to learn about how he overcame failure. He is also the author of a business psychology book Small Actions: Leading Your Career To Big Success.
LinkedIn Top Voice Eric Sim believes he has found a community by staying true to himself. (Photo: Eric Sim)
Similarly, mental health organisation Calm Collective Asia's co-founder and CEO Sabrina Ooi started actively posting “things that were blurring the lines between professional and personal” during the COVID-19 pandemic's early days.
The 35-year-old saw LinkedIn as a blog, due to features that encouraged longer-form entries. A regular status update today, for instance, can take up to 3,000 characters.
“I’m also a trained marketer, so I wanted to make sure that whatever I’m sharing was going to be relevant for the reader in a way that was tied back to professional growth. Because a lot of personal stuff affects the way that we grow professionally,” she added.
Around the same time, Ms Ooi saw other users becoming more willing to open up too. In 2021, when Calm Collective Asia ran a LinkedIn campaign titled Redefining Failure, it attracted “quite a lot of personal sharing that was genuine and authentic”, including from politicians Alvin Tan and Jamus Lim.
Sabrina Ooi, co-founder and CEO of mental health organisation Calm Collective Asia, has noticed the negative shift in her LinkedIn experience. (Photo: Sabrina Ooi)
At a time when major consulting firms were mostly the dominant source of insights on workplace culture, LinkedIn “emerged as a very refreshing” alternative, said Associate Professor Natalie Pang from the National University of Singapore's (NUS) communications and new media department.
“It was a unique platform just for people to talk about work and what it means to them in their context and their personal experiences. People got to hear more from the ground in terms of what it means to work, what does good leadership look like and so on.”
The increasingly personal content posted on LinkedIn also reflected the pandemic’s blurring of work-life boundaries in the real world, Assoc Prof Pang believes.
For their content, Mr Sim and Ms Ooi were eventually awarded a Top Voice badge.
According to LinkedIn, it reviews content on the platform to identify Top Voices, who are “a select group of global experts, leaders, changemakers, public figures and innovators”.
Top Voices is a so-called "invite-only" programme. Those deemed worthy receive a prestigious blue badge on their profile.
I, too, received a Top Voice badge in May 2023. I suspect it’s because, like Ms Ooi, I treated LinkedIn like a blog, where my professional updates often contained personal, uncensored thoughts.
It’s easy for such casual content to stand out on a supposedly corporate platform where being your true self, just like in a real-life workplace, is rare.
Also, I truly enjoyed being on LinkedIn.
But by October 2024, I no longer did. AI-generated content constantly invaded my user experience, no matter how many posts I hid or people I blocked and/or reported.
I decided LinkedIn was headed in a direction misaligned with my personal brand, and asked to opt out of the Top Voice programme.
The blue badge on my profile inadvertently associated me with a platform that seemed to champion virality over value – the opposite of what I stood for.
A few days later my badge was removed, and I let out a breath I didn't realise I was holding.
In hindsight, the writing was on the wall – or all over my newsfeed.
"DISTINCT LINKEDIN VOICE"
Ask ChatGPT to write a story in "LinkedIn style” and the AI chatbot will know what you mean.
That’s because users' approach to the platform has become so recognisable that it’s possible to recreate, NUS’ Assoc Prof Pang pointed out.
On LinkedIn itself, it's increasingly common to come across satire of standard LinkedIn content – although, like all good satire, part of the joy is seeing some miss the point. There just happens to be more of such people on LinkedIn, at least from my observation.
There even exists a “countermovement against the distinct LinkedIn voice”, Assoc Prof Pang added, referring to the Reddit community r/LinkedInLunatics – with over 722,000 members – that highlights “insufferable” LinkedIn content like “virtue signalling and cringeworthy titles”.
LinkedIn Top Voice Juliana Chan has termed this distinct voice “LinkedInese”.
The LinkedIn coach and founder of a LinkedIn masterclass called Find Your Superpower is broadly known for her personal career insights.
But in December, she went viral for a different reason. She parodied the typical LinkedIn “inspirational guru” in a short video – the first of what would be a series translating phrases into LinkedInese.
In the clip, Dr Chan, with a deadpan expression, translates “I took a nap” into LinkedIn speak: “Today, I indulged in a transformative afternoon reset. It is an incredible investment into building up energy, creativity and focus. Sometimes, a brief pause is all it takes to come back stronger than before. How about you?”
The 42-year-old was inspired by the worst archetype she sees on LinkedIn: The people who are constantly either “humbled" or "delighted”.
“The reason why those posts are cringey is because they’re actually very self-centred. They’re very low-value posts,” she said.
Related:
Yet people continue to share such LinkedIn content, completely earnestly. The platform, by virtue of its features, is meant to “celebrate and applaud you, and say you’re insightful”, said Assoc Prof Pang.
“Quite often when people post, they’re writing to expect a response. They’re performing in return for something – a response, an affirmation – and you can expect this reciprocity on LinkedIn.”
THE CHASE FOR CLOUT
In a bid to boost their engagement through commenting, some users have also taken to using AI tools to generate responses to others' posts. Or they just use LinkedIn's suggested prompts.
The latter has resulted in Calm Collective's Ms Ooi seeing “a lot of bot-like activity” take the place of more genuine interactions on her posts about mental health. For instance, 10 to 15 different people may leave the same comment, as though they were "programmed" to do so.
Such interactions feel "fake" and make her “a bit uncomfortable”, so she's stopped scrolling through her feed as much.
“The integration of AI, the usage of AI and the way we interact on LinkedIn (now) has really removed that human connection (that was once there). I think of AI as artificial intimacy,” she added.
Dr Juliana Chan, founder of LinkedIn masterclass Find Your Superpower, laments the rise of engagement pods but still believes it's possible to find a genuine community on LinkedIn. (Photo: Juliana Chan)
Then there are engagement pods on LinkedIn – groups of users, usually from similar industries, who have agreed to like, comment on and/or repost each other’s content. Some of these pods have over 1,000 members and even charge membership fees.
Dr Chan explained that pods use software tools to figure out posts that are trending on various social media platforms, including LinkedIn. These posts have a “hook” and a “template”, and are occasionally accompanied by simple illustrations. And they are proven to work.
“What happens is suddenly in that week, everyone’s posts would look the same," she said. “There are different topics, like about a toxic boss or a company that hates you, but all have the same structure. And they all ‘like’ it in the engagement pod, almost like a cartel."
As the goal is to boost engagement, regardless of quality, the result is an influx of what appears to be the platform's most popular content format right now: Generic advice listicles usually conveyed via a carousel, or career-related platitudes plastered onto a billboard.
Screenshot of a LinkedIn post with almost 4,000 likes, 700 comments and 300 reposts.
Yet, in a LinkedIn blog post on content that users are recommended to avoid, the platform discourages “participating in efforts to artificially boost visibility, such as joining engagement pods”.
LinkedIn did not directly address CNA's queries on what it plans to do about specific issues – including the rise of engagement pods, sloppy AI-generated content and bot-like behaviour – that have affected the “authentic sharing of ideas” it once fostered.
But a spokesperson maintained that “authenticity is key to keeping our LinkedIn community safe, trusted and professional”.
This starts with “knowing who you’re connecting with and the companies and jobs you’re considering”, said LinkedIn, pointing to free verification features to help people make more informed decisions about who they interact with.
A LinkedIn blog post from 2023 also outlines its "responsible AI principles": To advance economic opportunity, uphold trust, promote fairness and inclusion, provide transparency and embrace accountability.
LinkedIn is also “not about creation for the sake of entertainment”, the spokesperson said. Rather, it is invested in “surfacing insights, news and knowledge content that spark conversations between people on work topics you care about”.
MIRRORING REALITY
Some may argue that LinkedIn is just one platform. But Assoc Prof Pang believes LinkedIn, like most social media networks, reflects our desires, fears and even metrics for success.
The difference with LinkedIn is that it specifically simulates the workplace, where success is typically quantifiable – and hence pursuable and attainable.
“When it comes to work, there are distinct recipes and measurements for what we’d consider success, such as taking on more work,” said the NUS researcher.
“So, the desire to imitate a certain content style on LinkedIn, which people have seen succeed, reflects the real-life behaviour (to model what others deem successful).
"Because on LinkedIn, it’s about how many likes or reactions you have; whether you have a Top Voice badge; your number of followers; how many viewers have seen your post.”
Marketing consultant Adrian Tan also believes people "will continue to mirror what works publicly and find ways to optimise it".
Unfortunately, this means "you will have all these people riding this wave to teach more people how to do it in that way", the 45-year-old said.
"Whatever things you can't stand on LinkedIn right now, are going to be worse."
Screenshot of a submission on subreddit r/LinkedInLunatics, which highlights "insufferable" LinkedIn content.
And in another portent of real life imitating the online, the "office influencer" may soon be an official job scope, at least according to 2025 workplace ideas and trends released by none other than LinkedIn.
“With Gen Z's unrelenting demand for brand authenticity and personal connection, more employers are poised to hire in-house influencers in 2025 to give their online presence a relatable touch,” said a LinkedIn News Asia report.
CAN LINKEDIN FIND ITS SOUL AGAIN?
Some users are hopeful the platform can still bounce back from its current state.
Ms Ooi, for one, believes LinkedIn still "democratises the playing field for people anywhere in the world, no matter their socioeconomic status, their access to privilege or opportunities".
She recalled how it was “very validating to know that my voice matters”, when she received her Top Voice badge.
"(The platform) gives people a space to have a voice. That’s what I still love about LinkedIn, and I do want to see that continuing.”
Related:
When it comes to AI, since there’s no escaping its proliferation, Assoc Prof Pang hopes LinkedIn can go beyond a set of principles to prescribe guidelines and standards for its use.
Specifically, users "should have to declare that they’re using AI, or even just be open about how they have used AI in the creation of their post", she suggested.
Mr Sim, the former investment banker turned speaker and coach, believes “you can use AI but it cannot smell like AI”.
He uses ChatGPT to check his writing for major errors, but opts for his own “less sophisticated” words to keep his own voice, especially if the chatbot recommends “a word I don’t know or normally use”.
On the other hand, Dr Chan is stricter about not using ChatGPT or any generative AI tool at all.
In her LinkedIn coaching, she tells participants she would rather read “someone with spelling and grammatical errors” than a “perfectly written, cringey ChatGPT-esque post that I know clearly isn’t written by you”.
But it takes a while to convince some.
After all, there are users who come to her to hit a certain follower target – a goal that she disapproves.
“If your end point is fame itself, then you’ll be very sorely disappointed, because when you reach the other end, it’s hollow,” she said, having learnt the hard way.
Such clout-chasing tendencies could be dampened if LinkedIn clamps down on or at least "devalues" engagement pods, said Dr Chan.
It could also reduce or stop automated bots, or downrank users on the algorithm if they’re guilty of such content, she suggested.
Related:
Mr Tan, the marketing consultant, has a more realistic view. "If somehow doing it this way helps LinkedIn make more money, there's no reason for them to reverse," he said.
Individuals can still make themselves heard, however. He pointed to what I'd done by "openly rejecting" my Top Voice badge. I’d also posted on LinkedIn about my decision.
"That's another signal (to LinkedIn)," said Mr Tan. "It's just whether they want to start looking at all these voices and try to make any adjustments."
It is possible to build a personal brand and stay true to yourself. Authenticity, to Mr Sim, means he's the “same person” to people he's just met online as well as those he's known for decades.
“Sometimes it's very easy to put up a persona online; but in real life, you are a different person … Whichever industry you are in, it's better to be the same person, then you don't have to act. You can just be yourself," he said.
Some have told Dr Chan that they fear others wouldn’t like their words if they wrote authentically, sans AI.
But in my experience, that's a win. Better to be disliked for your personality than be liked for your persona.
Agree?
Continue reading...