Nonetheless, I am ever closer to closing my account and dumping the whole thing. Why? Because they are phenomenally annoying. Consider this message they just sent me:

The only thing these jobs have in common is that they are in or near NYC, where I do not live, I wouldn't be qualified for any of them, and there is no reason to think I'd be interested any of in them. Way to go. (ANN INC is Ann Taylor, the women's clothing chain. The ESP in ESP Prosearch has something to do with semiconductor lighting, not e-mail service providers. Catalyst is a non-profit related to workplace diversity.)

Oh, and my LinkedIn mail preferences have every kind of job offer turned off. No doubt their marketers, in the grip of Bad Marketer Syndrome, will claim that this is a new and different kind of job offer message unrelated to the six other kinds I've told them not to send me, and all I need to do to stop it is to go uncheck a brand new box, at which point it'll stop until they do it again.

I certainly do not claim to be a marketing whiz, but I don't think it takes a very high level of whizzitude to guess that if someone has told you not to send mail, and you send it anyway, what you send should be engaging and exciting, not irrelevant, inane, and irritating.