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Imagine this: you’re having a peaceful morning grabbing breakfast at Berg while scrolling through your phone, but then you suddenly receive a LinkedIn notification: You have notifications from ____. Curious, you click on it, and see a classmate posted:

I’m excited to share that I’ll be starting my position as an analyst intern at Goldman Sachs this summer!

Let that sink in for a minute or two. You reread the post to make sure you read it right, then click on their bio: Harvard ’28 | CS + Econ | Passionate about Investment Banking. Open to chat!

The sad truth is that a significantly large number of Harvard students are LinkedIn warriors. While you are trying to figure out the difference between Gov 10 and Gov 20 (answer: don’t take either), others are sliding into recruiter DMs, spam requesting connections until it reaches the maximum limit, and posting about how eating that ripe banana for dinner changed their life. Riveting stuff, really.

And they are everywhere (both physically and on LinkedIn). You’ll see them comment their emails on internship opportunity posts, congratulating others on their accomplishments, and at every club event possible, resume in hand.

So, how do you tell a LinkedIn warrior apart from a normal LinkedIn user? We’re here to break it down for you.

Using lowercases everywhere on their profile

Yes, we’re quirky (teehee)! We don’t want to use proper grammar or follow capitalization rules because we’re unique! The classic LinkedIn warrior. One size fits all tbh, especially in the Computer Science department.

And while having “yapping” in your skill set is not funny, I must admit that it’s a great skill. Goldman is calling, pick up babe <3. Add a few more of those short and sweet descriptions like “made some phone calls and worked on cool projects” and you’re bound to get that return offer. Embrace the nonchalance (source: trust us, we’re unemployed freshmen).

Rushing to update their profile as soon as they get into a club

After the consulting club comp process — dominated by all-nighters, completely nonsensical slide decks, and constant contact with the connections that got you in (don’t be shy now, spill) — it’s time to reap the real reward. Putting “Harvard Undergraduate Consulting Club” in your LinkedIn, along with that copy-paste description about the market cap and acceptance rate. Ahh, there’s no more cliché activity than this. I call cap.

The sappy posts that turn everything into suffering

No, you genuinely don’t need to make a post about every little thing that has happened to you. No need to reflect on how rejection from The Lampoon made you realize that perhaps life is more than the Harvard bubble. We here at Flyby already knew that #comp :)

Dropping out of Harvard for an AI startup

In just a few short months, we’ve already learned that, besides consulting, there’s only one other path out there for the overachieving eldest child: drop out of Harvard and work at an AI startup. Every day our classmates drop like flies.

So, if you see your Ec 10a friend make a LinkedIn post about this, let it be known that they’ve embarked on a dark journey to becoming a LinkedIn warrior! And there’s nothing you can do to stop it… but, hey, you’re not allowed to drop out unless you live in Wigglesworth or Currier House. Why walk when you can just sit at a desk all day coding?

Having your parents promote your posts

There is actually nothing worse than this. Except when you find out that their parents are consultants, so maybe everything about them does make a lot of sense. Do you think they sit around the dinner table and discuss LinkedIn strategies to increase engagement? The capital expenditures of Cyber Monday?

Thank goodness, my family is not a LinkedIn family. *shudders* Might be worse than having an almond mom…

They say these will be the best four years of your life. Maybe that’s true, or maybe it’s just a time for you to meet the most interesting people you’ll ever come across — whether it’s on a leisurely dilly-dally through the Yard, or the [redacted] website where you will announce your new BCG position! Remember when you said you wouldn’t sell out? Yeah so….how’s that going now?