[pardoned_turkey]

Interviewing takes time and effort, so it's best to focus your energy on promising leads. A strong endorsement from a person who worked with a candidate is a very promising signal. Without getting into the possible whys, "this stranger contacted me on LinkedIn instead of applying via the normal channels" usually isn't.

Of course, depends on how your pipeline looks like. But most tech job reqs get a lot of applications and passive leads.