LinkedIn has voicemail now, but please, don’t use it

If you think unsolicited messages would be much better as voicemails, then LinkedIn’s newest feature is just for you.

The company announced Thursday it’s adding a voice messages to its service, giving us yet another reason to leave our LinkedIn inboxes unchecked.

On paper, the feature makes some sense. Voice messaging is a standard feature on most modern messaging apps, and it’s incredibly popular in many countries outside the United States. But let’s not kid ourselves here: LinkedIn is not WhatsApp. 

On a platform already notorious for its high volume of unsolicited messages, voice messages will simply add just another layer of inconvenience to what’s already a huge annoyance. Sure, recording voice messages may be faster than actually typing them, but listening to a voicemail is definitely not faster than skimming a paragraph or two. What’s more convenient for you, the sender, is more time consuming for the recipient. 

Don’t get me wrong, I get that messaging is an important part of LinkedIn. But if your inbox is anything like mine, it’s already filled to the brim with messages I never asked for. Each week, I must weed through these on the off chance that there is something relevant to me. 

The only thing I can think of that would make scanning these messages worse would be having to sit through several minutes of voicemail instead.

So, please, spare us all, and just don’t do it.