When Rachel Wong saw the connection request pop up on her LinkedIn, she didn’t know what to think.
An alum of her then-workplace, Sam Sawchuck noted they likely had mutual friends and colleagues. He’d love to grab a coffee. He also admitted, apologetically, that he’d first seen her on Tinder.
Was this a date?
Tired of the endless roulette of online dating, more people are looking for love on LinkedIn.
While the platform’s guidelines strictly forbid any kind of romantic
When Rachel Wong saw the connection request pop up on her LinkedIn, she didn’t know what to think.
An alum of her then-workplace, Sam Sawchuck noted they likely had mutual friends and colleagues. He’d love to grab a coffee. He also admitted, apologetically, that he’d first seen her on Tinder.
Was this a date?
Tired of the endless roulette of online dating, more people are looking for love on LinkedIn.
While the platform’s guidelines strictly forbid any kind of romantic advances, it’s increasingly common for the networking site to feature—directly or indirectly—in users’ dating lives.
About one in four professionals believe using LinkedIn as a dating tool can be acceptable, according to a survey by Zety, a resume-template platform. And 22% said they had either reached out or responded to someone on LinkedIn with romantic intent.
“Unfortunately I did show the request to all the people at my workplace,” Wong laughed.
It ended up serving her well; her colleagues vouched for Sawchuck’s character. And after scanning his LinkedIn profile, Wong saw that he ran in similar professional circles and seemed ambitious. Plus, he was cute.
She accepted Sawchuck’s request and, keeping things professional, asked if he would help her think through a problem at work.
Now, years into dating, the couple are venue-shopping for a wedding.
“If it was LinkedIn, so be it,” Wong said. “I mean, he’s been the best connection I’ve ever made.”
A deepening exhaustion with dating apps has pushed many to look beyond swiping. Singles are trying speed dating, connecting through shared real-world interests and even using spreadsheets to break their dating algorithm. It shouldn’t be a surprise that a public-facing platform with clear headshots and ample information about a person’s path in life—everything dating apps today seem to lack—has become a go-to tool in the modern search for love.
Dating coach Jaime Bronstein is a proponent of using LinkedIn with ulterior motives. But a first message should always be platform appropriate, and never obviously romantic.
She suggests crafting messages that offer the pretense of networking while preserving ambiguity. Three pickup lines to avoid: “Are you single?” (Aggressive, potentially creepy); “I hope this isn’t too weird, but…” (Don’t plant any ideas); “You’re gorgeous!” (Also potentially creepy; don’t lead with physical appearance on a professional platform).
Of course, none of this is condoned by the networking app itself. “Our focus is on making sure that people are safe from unwanted romantic advances,” a LinkedIn spokesperson said.
After Esme Gordon-Craig’s internship ended, she took to LinkedIn to follow up with a colleague, suggesting they continue their conversation on career paths over drinks. He chose a pub near the office.
Once they were outside with a pint, “he was kind of like, ‘This is a date, isn’t it?’” Gordon-Craig said. “And I was like, ‘Yeah.’”
The 24-year-old Londoner, now working remotely as a freelance journalist, still frequently uses LinkedIn to make connections—professional, social and maybe more—that she doesn’t have easy access to without a team or an office.
“If there’s a spark, then it’s great,” Gordon-Craig said. “And if there’s not, then it’s just a good networking opportunity.”
The site can also be a useful vetting tool.
Katie Istomin, a rising sophomore at Cornell, wants to make sure that anyone she’s giving up time for will match her ambition and understand her busy schedule.
“LinkedIn kind of solves that for you,” said Istomin, who checks prospects’ majors and club involvement. “You know where they’re going, that they’re high-achieving—stuff like that.”
Just don’t expect to fly under the radar while you’re checking someone out. The site alerts users when someone has viewed their profile—which can either help or hurt your dating plans.
One of Istomin’s sorority sisters started a burner account so they could assess pages without giving anything away.
“LinkedIn’s low-key a snitch for that,” Istomin said about the alerts.
San Diego-based financial adviser Amal Hagisufi was simply recruiting for an empty role on her team when she sent a connection request to Moustafa Madkaur.
“Being in banking, I got these recruitment messages all the time,” Madkaur said. Initially he ignored her efforts. “But she’s very persistent.”
So he responded that the office, 40 minutes across town, was too far away.
But when Madkaur later came across Hagisufi while swiping through the dating site Plenty of Fish, he reconsidered.
Going back to her LinkedIn profile, she seemed “career focused, looking to grow as a person,” he said. “And you kind of got a feel that she was possibly looking for someone else to start building and growing with.”
Madkaur sent a new message over LinkedIn, this time with his phone number. He told Hagisufi he still wasn’t interested in the job, but had seen her on a dating site and if she wanted to go out sometime, she should shoot him a text.
“It was way more smooth than the way I had been previously approached on the dating apps,” Hagisufi said.
And, it turns out, a date is a much better motivator for making the trek across town.
Madkaur took Hagisufi to a waterfront restaurant where they discussed professional, financial and personal life goals. “Everything was aligning,” Hagisufi said. “We knew that we wanted to grow together and become, like, a boss couple.”
Write to Celia Bernhardt at celia.bernhardt@wsj.com
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