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Now LinkedIn Will Let You Leave Voicemail Messages (zdnet.com)

LinkedIn has been trying to make its business networking platform more like Facebook of late, with features like presence, and Google-like smart replies. Now, it's introducing voice messages just like Facebook and Facebook-owned WhatsApp. From a report: "Whether you're responding while walking or multitasking, or need to give an in-depth explanation, voice messages let you more easily and quickly communicate in your own voice with your connections," LinkedIn said in a blog. Personally, I loathe having to open voice messages on WhatsApp and have never received one on Facebook Messenger, but for the sender, at least, such services can be helpful if they're on the go and can't stop to type a message. And that's LinkedIn's justification for releasing the feature. LinkedIn thinks its new option will be a time-saver for users who find typing laborious in some situations. On the downside, this feature could rapidly become a real pain for those who already get bombarded with written messages from strangers promoting products and services on LinkedIn Messages.

28 of 47 comments (clear)

  1. What's the big deal? by The+Original+CDR · · Score: 2

    I already delete the voicemail from recruiters since I'm not in the job market. A few more deleted voicemails from LinkedIn won't hurt.

    1. Re:What's the big deal? by Hognoxious · · Score: 1

      In Soviet Russia, voicemail deletes YOU!

      --
      Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
  2. Wrong direction by xxxJonBoyxxx · · Score: 5, Insightful

    >> they're on the go and can't stop to type a message.

    No one uses voice mail anymore. My work phone has been blinking since I started my job years ago and I have no clue/interest in listening to whatever's stored up for me there.

    What we want is "text to speech" so we can send a moderately-involved message to someone when we're driving. And we already have it.

    So...who wants this feature again? If it's real, LinkedIn, please also make a feature to block these for people like me. My voice message on my phone already states "text or email me if you want me to get your message (because my voice mails go to /dev/null)" - make sure this feature has the same thing.

    1. Re:Wrong direction by johanw · · Score: 1

      Is it in your country not possible to deactivate voicemail completely? Providers here are sometimes making it hard to find but it can be done. If I don't pick up you get no connection at all.

    2. Re:Wrong direction by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 1

      I think the recruiters like it since they believe you will just blindly check your voice mail and be subjected to their spiel and cannot filter it out easily as you can with text messages where you can a) see who sent it and ignore it if it's someone you don't know and b) quickly tell that you're not interested. For most of us, this is trash. We're either looking for a job or not, there is very little "casual" looking these days as companies expect you are "all in" on interviews or HR throws you out before you get to the door, and while we may be looking to improve our wages, that's not a function the job market wishes to support. At all.

      If you ARE in the job market, then this just makes everything harder. Time you could be spending developing your resume, developing contacts, researching prospects, etc. is lost listening to someone speak at you in real time.

  3. Wow! by Translation+Error · · Score: 2

    This is exactly what I don't want!

    --
    When someone says, "Any fool can see ..." they're usually exactly right.
  4. Ah, LinkedIN. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 1

    "This is Joe Schoe with Fly-by-night recruiters across the country from you and we have an opportunity for you in your area. Please send you current resume to joe@fly-by-night.com. I'm at 879-555-2434. Thank you."

    So, you do it. A couple of unanswered emails later, you call.

    "Hey Joe. How's it going. I just wanted to follow up on the opportunity you were talking about."

    "Oh, hey how you do'in. Yeah, that job was closed out."

    That was my experience on LinkedIN. Plus those blind inquiries that really creeped me out. Any actual jobs? Never.

    Oh, and too many people who had my email address in their contacts list allowed LinkedIN to have it. So, I ended jup with a constant bombardment for "professional" contacts form people who I only played tennis with, volunteered, and other casual contacts in completely unrelated professions - some were even retired (why they kept their LinkedIN account???)

    I deleted my account - or so I thought.

    I can just imagine all the junk calls from "recruiters". (I think most tech recruiters are doing that because they were fired for ethics violations at the used car lot.)

  5. High time it costs them money to contact me by 140Mandak262Jamuna · · Score: 3, Interesting
    The cost of communication falling has made spamming possible.

    I would like some communication platform that charges people sending voice mail, email, regular mail whatever some cash. And share part of the the cash with me. Users should be able to set a price too. "Video promotions, $2 a minute, Audio promotions, 0.10 a minute. Text messages 10 cents. Emails with pdf text, 25 cents. Audio promotions 1$ a minute, limit 2 minutes. Video promotions 5$ a minute, 1 minute max". The service will collect fees from senders take its cut and give the rest to me.

    I could whitelist friends and family. But still they should pay very nominal fees to the service, not to the recipient, to cut down the stupid forwards.

    --
    sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
    1. Re:High time it costs them money to contact me by cascadingstylesheet · · Score: 1

      The cost of communication falling has made spamming possible.

      I would like some communication platform that charges people sending voice mail, email, regular mail whatever some cash. And share part of the the cash with me.

      You're in luck! LinkedIn does do the first half of that; recruiters pretty much have to sign up for a paid account.

      Pay you? Oh, well, er ...

  6. Ring ring by paiute · · Score: 3, Funny

    Hello, paiute. I saw your resume on LinkedIn and thought you might be interested in a great opportunity which just opened up. Now I know that this job is for an entry level BS and you have a PhD with years of experience, and I see that you have worked in the same area for a couple of decades and this job is in Buttsniff Michigan... Please call me to talk about applying!

    --
    If Slashdot were chemistry it would look like this:Cadaverine
    1. Re:Ring ring by jeff4747 · · Score: 2

      And now that recruiter has your rejection (and mine and a few others) to use as proof that they need an H1B visa.

    2. Re:Ring ring by radarskiy · · Score: 1

      Clearly made up, since the recruiter would never have actually looked at you resume to note that you had a PhD and would just be going down a list of phone numbers that an automated search spit out.

      (Yes, I have responded to recruiters saying they clearly did not bother to compare the job to my qualifications and are WASTING MY TIME.)

  7. Oh god please no by ruddk · · Score: 1

    another voicemail I will be ignoring.

  8. Feature request by Opportunist · · Score: 1

    block all voice messages

    --
    We used to have a Bill of Rights. Now, with the rights gone, all we have left is the bill.
  9. I've had to block linkedin at the border... by QuietLagoon · · Score: 1

    ... there were too many spam-like messages coming in, messages that were not wanted. From the looks of it, the messages originated when someone outside my network uploaded their email address book to linkedin so that linkedin could try to sucker in more people by sending out emails to those in the address books. That just annoyed a lot of people who did not want anything to do with linkedin.

  10. what is next fax or telegram? by kiviQr · · Score: 1

    people disable voice mails, if you want to reach me send me text or email.

  11. Re:What we want is "text to speech" by rnturn · · Score: 1

    ``What we want is "text to speech" so we can send a moderately-involved message to someone when we're driving. And we already have it.''

    There's nothing more ridiculous that having that "text-to-speech" feature accidentally get turned on and start reciting the contents of an overnight batch job failure's error log. (I used to put those on speakerphone for all to listen to with me. :-) ) I didn't know a single co-worker who used that "feature"---at least not more than once.

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    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  12. One more nail in LinkedIn's coffin by rnturn · · Score: 1

    Oh how I will enjoy getting voice mails from LinkedIn from every Indian IT recruiter and their cousin wanting to join my LI network. (I predict that 99% of these voice mails will come from phone numbers in New Jersey.)

    I look forward with great anticipation to the day when I can leave LinkedIn behind.

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    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  13. Excellent by mr.mctibbs · · Score: 1

    With this great new addition, LinkedIn is dramatically increasing the amount of content that I can look forward to ignoring on their platform.

  14. Re: listening to someone speak at you in real time by rnturn · · Score: 1

    The pisser is that it's not in real time. You will almost certainly have to listen to the spiel several times to get past a thick accent or someone who speaks so fast you'd think they're being charged by the second to leave the message.

    And, since it's a voice mail, you won't be able to stop the spiel and ask questions as to whether the job they're hawking is even something you're qualified for (in my experience they rarely are). You get the call because something popped up on a monitor after your resume got a single keyword match. I once got an email about a job as a Surgical Administrator because I was once a systems administrator and countless emails about a job for "Mundane-low-paying-activity-we-want-to-make-sound-impressive Engineer" because of my degree. To clarify these things after listening to a voice mail requires another phone call/interruption. Oy!

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    CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
  15. Show of hands... by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    A show of hands, please. Who needs this?

    Maybe I'm an old phart, but I only ONLY use Linkedin for the Curriculum Vitae of a prospective employee or employer, to track down former bosses, employees or co-workers, and communicate with same. I have no interest in a "linkedin" version of Facebook. And I'm getting a little ticked off by the thinly disguised commercials in the news stream and in my linkedin message box. Enough so that I'm wondering, is there an alternative to Linkedin. [1]

    [1] Not Glassdoor. I regret ever creating an account there. Now I'm absolutely inundated by job spam from offshore recruiters. "We are being desperately needing a sign painter in (some place you've never heard of)!!"

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
    1. Re:Show of hands... by rnturn · · Score: 1

      Glassdoor's job ads are mostly worthless. I can't remember how times I've gone to a job listing in one of their emails and be informed that the job is no longer available. Just today I got an email for a position that had an application window that closed three days ago. Glassdoor marked it as "New". They may still be somewhat useful for researching a company (even knowing that online reviews are largely only written by the unhappy former employees) but for job leads they're just not very good.

      I got into it with one of their tech support people when my Facebook profile picture suddenly appeared in the comments section of a Glassdoor article I had replied to. Their people swore up and down that this could only happen if I also had a Glassdoor account. I didn't--and they verified that I didn't--but they could not be convinced that my photo had appeared in their comment section. I even changed my FB profile photo, commented on another Glassdoor article, and verified that they were grabbing the photo from FB. Sent them screen captures of what was happening to document that they were, indeed, grabbing photos from FB but it was like talking to a brick wall. I just love it when the tech support crew doesn't even know how their application works.

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      CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
    2. Re:Show of hands... by roc97007 · · Score: 1

      Glassdoor's job ads are mostly worthless. I can't remember how times I've gone to a job listing in one of their emails and be informed that the job is no longer available. Just today I got an email for a position that had an application window that closed three days ago. Glassdoor marked it as "New". They may still be somewhat useful for researching a company (even knowing that online reviews are largely only written by the unhappy former employees) but for job leads they're just not very good.

      I got into it with one of their tech support people when my Facebook profile picture suddenly appeared in the comments section of a Glassdoor article I had replied to. Their people swore up and down that this could only happen if I also had a Glassdoor account. I didn't--and they verified that I didn't--but they could not be convinced that my photo had appeared in their comment section. I even changed my FB profile photo, commented on another Glassdoor article, and verified that they were grabbing the photo from FB. Sent them screen captures of what was happening to document that they were, indeed, grabbing photos from FB but it was like talking to a brick wall. I just love it when the tech support crew doesn't even know how their application works.

      Either they don't know, or are instructed to play dumb. The more I hear about Glassdoor, the more I regret ever doing business with them.

      Lessee, what if you replace your profile picture with goatse, and then quickly reply to a Glassdoor article before Facebook takes it down?

      What if we *all* do that?

      --
      Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
  16. Re:What we want is "text to speech" by robkeeney · · Score: 1

    From context, I think he meant "speed-to-text" aka voice recognition.

  17. Re:What we want is "text to speech" by dromgodis · · Score: 1

    God, I would hate getting an SMS message every minute saying "You are traveling at 67 km/h".

  18. Do You Want To Get Shot? by sexconker · · Score: 1

    Because that's how you get shot.

  19. Re:Yep. And when you do..... by AlanBDee · · Score: 1

    I have had a very different experience with LinkedIn. Almost every contact I get is a fairly legitimate match and I suspect it's because I have my profile well filled out. Since you say "it bothers you about not[sic] having a photo" then I suspect your profile is a bit sparse. I would suggest that you either go all in and fill it out completely or shutdown your account. I've found it helpful more then once in finding a job.

  20. Re:Throw everything at the wall and see what stick by roc97007 · · Score: 1

    Yep, welcome to the "shotgun technique" of offshore recruiting.

    --
    Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.