Salisbury — After months on New Brunswick’s unemployment line, a Salisbury man’s week took a drastically positive turn when he woke up Friday at 11:45 a.m. to a LinkedIn endorsement for “social media.” LinkedIn is an online tool allowing individuals to share their professional profiles and CVs with prospective employers. It also has a feature to “endorse” your connections in specific areas, for example, skills such as “Microsoft Excel” or “paranormal investigation.”
“First thing I heard Friday morning was the Star Trek theme song, from the ’60s — that’s my ring tone for emails. Scared the crap out of me at first, but then I checked ‘er and it was an email directly from LinkedIn’s head office,” Harris explained to The Manatee‘s news staff earlier today.
Harris, 56, went on to say, “Social media is what it’s all about this day and age. The kids are on their iPhones and MySpaces and they’re all working at these neat tech startups sitting on yoga balls and beanbag chairs. If they see my endorsement in ‘social media,’ I’ll surely have a good chance to get my foot in the door at one of these companies that could make ‘er big!”
Harris joined the professional network 6 months ago to increase his chances of gaining employment in the province. He also joined Twitter but says he still hasn’t figured out how to change his profile picture from the default Easter egg avatar to his 1983 St. Thomas University graduation picture.
Harris later received another email from LinkedIn advising him to congratulate 10 connections on their new jobs. Harris told The Manatee’s news staff he’ll be taking the rest of the week off from looking for work to send out all 10 congratulatory emails, followed by respective endorsements in “Microsoft Office” and “SaaS.”