Slashdot Mirror
Does LinkedIn Suck? (techcrunch.com)
"LinkedIn Sucks" writes TechCrunch's John Biggs:
I hate LinkedIn. I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don't know why I wouldn't. There is no clear benefit to the social network. I've never met a recruiter on there. I've never gotten a job. The only messages I get are spam from offshore dev teams and crypto announcements. It's like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone's award-winning chili or dog. I understand that I'm using LinkedIn wrong. I understand I should cultivate a salon-like list of contacts that I can use to source stories and meet interesting people. But I have my own story-sourcing tools and my own contacts. It's not even good as a broadcast medium....
LinkedIn is a spam garden full of misspelled, grunty requests from international software houses that are looking, primarily, to sell you services. Because it's LinkedIn it's super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam.... I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It's never worked for me.
The article ends with advice for people trying to contact him on LinkedIn for promotional purposes. "LinkedIn isn't a game. It isn't an alternative to MailChimp. It's a conversational tool. Use it that way." But what do Slashdot's readers think? Is LinkedIn a valuable resource for finding recruiters and job offers, interesting perspectives, and updates on your friends' careers?
Or does LinkedIn suck?
LinkedIn is a spam garden full of misspelled, grunty requests from international software houses that are looking, primarily, to sell you services. Because it's LinkedIn it's super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam.... I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It's never worked for me.
The article ends with advice for people trying to contact him on LinkedIn for promotional purposes. "LinkedIn isn't a game. It isn't an alternative to MailChimp. It's a conversational tool. Use it that way." But what do Slashdot's readers think? Is LinkedIn a valuable resource for finding recruiters and job offers, interesting perspectives, and updates on your friends' careers?
Or does LinkedIn suck?
Was that before or after you found out LinkedIn sends spam on your behalf?
I am a recuiter, linkedin provides about 25% of the people i place. I approach ~200 people per week via the platform.
If you are not getting approaches you should look at what your profile portrays you as. Also you can mark yourself as actively looking which highlights you to recruiters.
Way back when, I joined LinkedIn because someone said it would help me with my Internet Marketing efforts. Years later, when I decided to wean myself off of as many social networks as possible, it was the first to go. I agree totally with the author.
...will be from people who make money from the platform.
"It's for work!"
OK sure. But why do I need a picture of myself? How I look has no bearing on my ability to do my job, since I'm not a model. But no, every other week, LinkedIn would prompt me to upload a picture, despite repeatedly saying "No". So, I closed me account. I don't want facebook. I sure as hell don't want a cheap facebook clone.
One was the worst job I ever had. One was the best. On average, it is okay.
Source: Beteridgeâ(TM)s Law
I pretty much just use the core LinkedIn features. I don't post blogs there, don't really post anything at all on their stream, neither do I take their trainings, or participate at all in any of the many groups I joined years ago.
However:
1) In my career I have had many offers, and actually taken 3 jobs (including my current one and the one right before that) because recruiters found me on LinkedIn. Whether it was my profile, connections through my network, I don't know, but they found me.
I've found many headhunters rely very heavily on LinkedIn.
2) It's a good way to stay in touch with people, if you have the discipline to do so. Professional contacts will stay in touch via LinkedIn, whereas they would be reluctant to connect on Facebook, or to share personal phone #s or email addresses. They'll share business phone numbers and email addresses, but if they leave that job, you can't get in touch with them anymore. LinkedIn connections provide a way to do that.
About once a year I set aside one day on a weekend, and just drop notes to all my contacts who I'd like to stay in touch with. I write up a core letter which gets customized a bit, but it summarizes what I've been up to, and inquires after the recipient. It's a good way to keep the network alive by sending out a ping and just staying in touch with folks.
I've also in recent years developed a general rule that for the most part, I don't accept invites unless I know the person somewhat substantially ie we worked together, or spent a few days together in some training etc and had meaningful interactions there. I rarely accept "cold call" invites, and am quite selfish about accepting invites from bare acquaintances, that guy I spent 5 minutes talking to at that conference, unless I think there may be something in it for me (he's at a high/senior position at a company I may want to be at someday).
Finally, when applying to jobs, I do like being able to just click on a job on LinkedIn and apply with my profile. Upload resume and done. When they take me to the company's website and I have to register and create a profile or remember the login info from the last time I did that, it's painful. I do like that near one-click experience for the few companies which allow doing so on their LinkedIn postings.
So long story short, I think LinkedIn has some value to me, but not to the extent that they'd like to think they do. All the expansion in features they're doing, I don't use them.
-"Those who fought today will die tommorow."-
I never saw the benefit of LinkedIn outside of reconnecting with a few former business acquaintances. That said, as soon as Microsoft bought them, I cancelled my account. Microsoft knows how to ruin just about anything these days.
Regardless of how useful Linkedin might be for some people (mostly pond scum recruiters), they got to their current size by stealing email address books and impersonating their own users to recruit more. They settled out of the resulting legal action for a much smaller amount of money than they made off those tactics, so I guess there's a good lesson for you budding entrepreneurs. Their site is practically a catalog of UI dark patterns.
In short, Linkedin are a bunch of fucks. Don't let fear of missing out on a hypothetical job scare you into giving them your information or consent.
LinkedIn is a terrible idea because:
- Recruiters throw useless jobs your way or completely throw your application out if you aren't on it.
- other people use it to stalk you
- Everyone on there just "vouches" for each other like some sort of bizarre prisoners dilemma.
- They've been hacked god knows how many times.
- owned by Microsoft who will data mine the shit out of you and then follow you across the rest of their platforms.
I started using it recently, mostly because I am doing a mid age career shift towards academia, research and consultancy and I need a new network of the connections. In my case it didn't bring jobs (but that's academia, so not easy), but it did bring useful contacts and works good as a platform to showcase my publications. Improvable maybe, entirely useless not. And I don't get that many ads.
almost as much as /.
The problem with all of these sites is that they're for-profit corporations that don't have honest business models. Why allow Facebook to control your social life? Why allow LinkedIn to control your job search and steal your address book to spam your friends? Why allow Google to control your email? The problem is not using a service. The problem is with using a service that makes its money by exploiting you.
I wouldn't use any of those sites. But I also have my own business. So it's probably easier for me to avoid LinkedIn and ignore their spam than it is for someone who works in the corporate, white-collar world.
and look where it got him!
I get multiple recruiters a month contacting me with decent job offers that align with my skill set. If I were looking to change companies and do the same thing, it would be a great resource.
I am only passively looking at this point though. And I am only interested in moving up, not laterally.
In the middle to late stages of my career with 20 years of experience. It might be different for people who are just getting started.
Unlike the author of the article, I do not just accept anyone who wants to connect. I only accept connection requests from people I have done business with, or want to do business with. I'd say a good 85%+ of the time, I am the one initiating the connection request. I deny most connection requests because they tend to come from people overseas who I do not know and will likely never meet.
On Linked-In you can get a long list of employees working at a target. This can be VERY useful. It is almost as good as downloading a company's directory.
I've always thought any company with half a brain would put a clause in employment agreements baring employees from listing their employer on Linked-In.
I got my current job through linked in, I get recruiters from Facebook, google and amazon on the regular for software engineering positions. If youâ(TM)re having a bad experience then I blame you. I donâ(TM)t really stand out as a developer but my profile primarily gets hits from legitimate recruiters and colleagues only. What settings do you have on? What kind of professional skills do you have listed? Are you presenting yourself well or just throwing up a profile with your picture?
And I'm not wasting any more time commenting.
My only experience is getting the spammy emails of people wanting to add me as a contact on the site. I have no idea who any of these people are either. That's why I avoid linkedin.
until I got an invite from an old friend. Then I set up an account.
After seeing the clickbait-tedium it takes to enter your information, I deleted it again and went back to ignoring invites.
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
There's a spectacular level of narcissism involved in assuming that something doesn't work because it doesn't work for the person involved. How a tech site blogger would use the platform is very different to how people that are accountants, lawyers, academics and so on use it. Then again, I guess "spectacular level of narcissism" and "TechCrunch" are redundant.
'nuff Said.
The author is doing it wrong? Selling products? What?
LI is the only way I can reach out to old colleagues from my 20 years in the tech industry. I dont add recruiters or anyone I dont already know (neither should the author) I know there are other ways to keep in touch / reach out, but LI has been the standard for people in my field for a while so that's how we do it.
When I look for jobs I inquire among my 200 or so contacts there, and I find them. I don't use it for news, blogs, and ignore the ads.
Sucks
I have no need for LinkedIn. Despite my boss's recommendation that I create an account, I closed my account years ago. Have never had any feedback from anyone at all about LinkedIn. A mail filter deletes any emails I get that even contain the word LinkedIn. So why should I care?
LinkedIn is like just about any other social connection group - it will include unwanted and "cold call" contacts. Ignore them. There's quite a bit of good from a site like LinkedIn, especially for consultants - I get a lot of job offers (many more than I can fill) from it, and get to pick and choose. It's a great way to locate consultants or be located.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
The closer I get to retirement, the more link requests I get from "wealth management" or "financial analyst" folks.
I should run an experiment and change my status to retired, just to see if they pounce.
Yes
The value of LinkedIn is vastly diminished by its weird subscription model. You have two choices:
1) Receive about 80% of the Facebook experience for $0; or
2) Receive a few modest but nice premium features, such as messaging and more detailed "who viewed your profile" info, for $$$$$$$$$$. The cheapest plan starts at $30/month.
That's it. There is no in-between.
The costs are such that the only reason I would ever "subscribe" would be when I had a specific, acute need - and once that need was satisfied, probably after one month, I'd immediately cancel. On the other hand, at a price point of around $10/month (which, incidentally, is what Apple Music charges...), I'd just sign up to have the features available at my whim.
LinkedIn is one of many companies that just doesn't seem to understand how people view its features. It could really boost its user base *and value* by making its subscription plans not suck.
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
The paid version can rank you and you can rank yourself with the job to see if the recuiter will even waste his or her time? If you are high you can also send a message directly.
The problem is HR today uses filtering or ATS systems that turn your hard worked resume into a black hole. You compete with 1 to 500 other people and you NEVER hear back! It is ridiculous.
LinkedIN helps you go around this problem by contacting the manager directly.
http://saveie6.com/
a Millennial. I have 40 years of contacts not random crappy people I accept because they ping me.
Since I do t use Facebook, LinkedIn is the only tool for people to find me. But, it is pretty much worthless for anything useful. I am forced by my marketing person to like and comment on shit, and to reject recruiters.
It did import my contact list years ago... and I never delete anyone. Fun to see what people I met 20-30+ years ago are doing now...
Useless? Yes.
accept connect requests from recruiters, nad from people working at places you want to work at.
Don't post political crap.
like posts from "thought leaders"
There's no way I can answer this headline with no!
"A person is smart. People are dumb, panicky dangerous animals and you know it." - K
LinkedIn is a dumpster-fire of suck.
This is my profile. https://www.linkedin.com/in/si... I get job offers from trusted recruiters. They find my Masters in Poverty Management from University of North Korea highly valuable.
Before Microsoft bought it, It was more of a meeting and news site. Sucked only a little. But also the source of several gigs, so I'm not complaining.
It started going downhill about six months after Microsoft bought it. Now TFA gives an accurate description. I used to have browser tab open there all the time. Now I go there once or twice a year. And respond to (almost) all connection requests with, "Have we met?" Usually the last I hear from them.
Lemmings are silly; dinosaurs are extinct.
I have a profile, mostly because I just want to have one if old friends/colleagues want to reach out to me to say hi (I don't make myself really available on other social networks). I've set it up mostly specifically for that, and to avoid getting recruiter emails (no picture, no access to my email, no real "advertising myself to get a job" thing).
So why does it suck? Because despite trying to avoid recruiters and other spam, once in a while I'll get a spam to my work email about seminars, job fairs, services, etc. that I never signed up for (I never, ever put my work email out anywhere for getting contacted).
So how did these spammers get my email? The only way I can think of is them having 'guessed' my email address based on my name and employer, which is only available together on..... (drumroll....) LinkedIn! I've never checked the email server logs, but I'm convinced they try several variations of my contact email when generating their spam.
So it's obvious that LinkedIn is just basically another place for the usual spammers to get a fresh list of people to pester about their services/products, which makes it pretty much useless as a social network.
AC comments get piped to
I've been using LinkedIn since 2010, and I get two or three connection requests a week. I reject all of them from strangers or recruiters and only accept them from people I actually know. I get four or five job suggestions a week and at least one or two job OFFERS a month based on my profile alone. It helps that I have over 700 connections and a couple dozen recommendations.
In my mind, it's all about the connections. If three people are competing for a job and they look the same on paper, I'm going to choose the one someone I know recommends.
The one difference I see between LinkedIn and the only other two job-related social sites I use is that the quality and veracity of the contacts I get from LinkedIn seem to be a little higher. Dice and Monster generate hundreds of contacts every month, and they're all shiat. Every single one of them is from a third (or fourth or fifth) party contracting firm who want me to take a position for far far below market rate AND pay my own travel expenses. And they're all automated keyword search spam too. You can tell that not a single soul actually read my posted resume (if they had, they wouldn't have bothered sending me a job spec that had little or no correspondence to my experience).
LinkedIn, on the other hand, generates a lot fewer contacts. But they're almost always from an actual human being who has actually read my resume. Granted, that doesn't guarantee a good match. Sometimes I think the human beings are dumber than the keyword matching programs. But at least you know someone had to THINK it was a good match. And unlike the other two services, sometimes they're right.
As far as using the network to find jobs, it's useless. I did give it a shot once, but blindly asking a contact of a contact of a contact of a contact... if they have any openings for my specialty is about as useful as it sounds. At best, the networking feature lets me enjoy a little shadenfreude when I see a former suck-ass employer get plowed under.
John Biggs is an egotistical writer who is so needy of attention that he has accepted all "friend" requests on the LinkedIn social network and currently has 16,000+ "friends". Yet he writes an article on TechCruch, LinkedIn, and Medium whoring for agreement that LinkedIn sucks so that he might drive up his readership.
I'm posting as A/C because I have a life, don't need the karma, and Slashdot - you are better than this - don't give that attention whore a front page article!
PS. I'm happily receiving leads for jobs via LinkedIn. I only accept connections from people I can pick out of a lineup.
And with that, I'm going back to Ars!
I have used Linkedin. I utterly refuse to use facebook. The crap Google pushes I never bothered with.
Corporatism != Free Market
is when I get spammed messages from acquaintances because LinkedIn stole their address list.
If you write papers then Research Gate is a much more logical social network to belong to since it gives people access to copies of your papers and track how many people grazed and how many people actually downloaded your paper.
Some drink at the fountain of knowledge. Others just gargle.
You accept every request and then complain that you only get spam? Do I need to elaborate? You just confessed to abiding by the basic social behavior that has made spam a profitable venture. You're just facilitating in a more modern means but if you're careless in your actions than it's fair to assume that you'll be accosted with the equivalent of the accepted generated definition of what is recognized as spam.
Linked in does suck
LinkedIn is a professional tool that can be used correctly to your benefit. I have a hyper-focused field I'm in, and I've personally make a few hundred thousand off of it, so here are my tips:
Don't accept high school contacts. If you are now in a hyper-focused field like "Freelancer with 10 years experience in medical coding software", then don't accept contacts that aren't in your field (like contacts from your first general programming jobs). If you freelance and have clients listed as jobs in your job history, don't accept just any rando who has worked at the same company unless you know them or would benefit from knowing them.
If you want to be aggressive, find the companies you want to contract with or work for, send a linkedIn invite with a personal message to the person in your field. Some will respond immediately, some will take a month, and some will ignore it. I've had good luck with only getting about 15% ignores.
Occasionally 'like' articles that are interesting and pertain to some new development in your field. Not necessary, but it will show in people's feed who glance at LinkedIn.
Include a good level of detail at each relevant company you've worked for. I like to know who is browsing past my profile, so I pay $30 a year to see who is coming by. I occasionally find a reason to reach out to some of these people if they're relevant. Compared to my revenue, the $30 is a no-brainer.
Better than that, try this spam blocker. APK
Only HERE you find Affiliate SPAM with croflol snickering from around the corner. Maybe that is why APK has not resurrected CmdrTaco yet????? apk
P.S. => I am not APK..apk
I've gotten plenty of requests from recruiters on LinkedIn, so it certainly has been useful for me for that. Can't say I've found a job that way, but it is one of many tools. It is also useful to keep track of people I used to work with, to see where they are now and if I need to contact them again in the future. Otherwise, I rarely go on the site, other than to update my profile.
The OP makes the mistake of adding anyone who requests. I personally only add people I know, or recruiters I want to do business with.
This isn't hard. If you accept everyone into "your" network, it's no surprise that all the messages you get are marketing.
It's worth spending a few minutes to think about how the platform works. People connected to people you allow in your network can send you messages for free. People outside that network effectively have to pay to be able to send you messages.
If your network is limited to people you actually know, you'll get many fewer nonsense messages.
You can bet Microsoft's PR dept will pounce on any comment and pretend it has value..... $26.2 billion.
You signed up for Linkedin as a professional network and later Microsoft buys it, and uses the email address data to autofill outlook and your CV data for keyword mining. So you cannot use LinkedIn anymore because its a risk to your company if the roles of key employees are saleable data to competitors.
$26.2 billion, who in their right mind
For once, perhaps Betteridge was wrong?
The real "Libtards" are the Libertarians!
This story is most timely for me! I know this will not relate well to many of you, but perhaps there are others like me. I retired from an industrial electrician's job in January 2018. My body was too tired to maintain the pace of a maintenance department setting. I did not want to finish my working days by being fired. So, I announced my retirement, and, on to a Social Security check I went. I truly thought I was done. I was at peace with this. Three weeks ago, completely unsolicited, I was contacted by a curriculum manager of a regional technical college. They had found my LinkedIn page. They want me to teach! There are still things that could go wrong with this, however, I am to report for my first day of work in about 32 hours from now. Whether or not this works out, it's been an exciting three weeks. If I don't cut it, I can just go back to being that quiet retiree. I owe this opportunity, at least in part, to that LinkedIn page I never took down. Yes, I know this does not address other well known issues with LinkedIn. I'm not going to be complaining for a while just yet! Best regards to you all.
I get lots of recruiters, even now that I am no longer looking, who approach me.
Before I got my current job, I had plenty of good leads on positions through recruiters, but as I was gainfully employed (not desperate), I passed on a number of positions I interviewed for, or was considered too high-priced for employment at some companies. My current job came as an HR recruiter contacted me - that was two years ago, and I got the salary I was looking for, at a company I enjoy working for.
A lot of it depends on location and your credentials... but my experience with LinkedIn was pretty good. I suspect if it isn't working well for you, it's because you aren't using it right. Social Media isn't my favorite thing at all... that said, it might be my reluctance to depend on social media, or let it take over most of my life, is probably part of the reason for my experience.
Thinking it was a mistake, I looked a little closer, and on the line after the password request, the said, I quote "Don't worry, we'll only hold onto it for a minute."
I am absolutely serious.
"Please give us your password, but don't worry, we'll only hold onto it for a minute"
Please give use your password, but DON'T WORRY WE'LL ONLY HOLD INTO IT FOR A MINUTE!
And they were serious. They were completely serious.
Here guys take my email password which will also give you access to a unix shell account, but shit I won't worry, after all, you're only going to hold into it for a minute. I mean, it's not like you got sued for accessing people's contacts and spamming everyone on it.
What's scary is that some people probably actually gave it to them.
I had an account but deleted it once I realized that some of the people it claimed were trying to connect with me (or request endorsements or whatever) almost certainly had no idea it was sending requests to me claiming the requests were from them. Even after I deleted my account, I kept having to re-unsubscribe my email address every time someone "invited" me to connect with them (pretty sure many of them didn't specifically request to connect with me, I was probably just in their email contacts list).
We are dealing with it. He will be in jail, possible executed as a traitor. And when we are doe dealing with it, if we are VERY lucky, the Republican party will be outlawed and jailed. Then maybe a more sensible party can arise. And let those small government types die from the drugs, die in a blaze of glory from their guns, and die as they have no jobs and starve to death. Enjoy.
They started spamming one of my accounts many years ago. After the fuckwits ignored multiple nasty grams, I promptly firewalled their entire netblock, and solved the problem permanently.
They're still hammering away, even though I've probably had them blocked for 10+ years now.
Lawyers, MBA's, RIAA? A jedi fears not these things!
Even the guys who designed LinkedIn says we're all using it wrong. Invite people you actually KNOW. Don't invite everybody in your address book. Don't accept links from people you don't know and work with. Don't recommend people for a skill unless you KNOW that he has that skill. Unfortunately, there doesn't seem to be a way to refuse skill recommendations for skills that you either know you don't have, or don't want to be known FOR.
It all sucks, because we've been using it in a sucky way. At this point, there probably isn't a way to fix things; the database is already too corrupt to fix.
Rarely accept anyone you dont know or have not had contact with outside of LinkedIn... ever.
Doing so is just a ticket to win a stupid prize. Ding you've won and got on Slashdot for it.
LinkedIn just a front door advertisement to your personal workspace. Why let everyone in the door?
Seriously just stop because you are using it wrong.
This timeline gets stanger and stranger.
Actually you did claim that hosts files protect against Spectre and Meltdown. Your rampant spam about the Mac version of your program makes that claim. We all know you posted thats spam, so stop lying and denying it.
Stop accepting every single request, thats the first thing. My connections are all basically colleagues, others I know in the industry, or actual friends. I do get the usual amazon recruitment spam, to which I got part way through the interview process from until they decided to waste my time scheduling a phone interview and never calling.
However my current job where Im very happy at came from a recruiter from linked in. It was a place where former coworkers worked, and I had heard good things and had been interested, so it was easy for their HR department to find me through there. All initial communication was done via linked until the interviews started. So its all in how you use it.
Also sitting in on some interviews at the new job, everyone there uses linked in for reference during interviews, none of us expect a physical resume anymore, everyone just has a laptop open to your linked in so they can reference it and google terms from it as needed for questions
Yes, its totally useless network.
I keep getting spamvites from LinkedIn all the frickin' time. I'm not a LinkedIn-user, I stand to gain a grand total of absolutely fucking nothing out of joining, so I obviously clicked on the "Unsubscribe"-link in the first few mails -- didn't do jack shit! LinkedIn keeps sending those spamvites from the same spammers, ignoring the fact that I "unsubscribed" from those mails, and they provide no way of contacting their support or anything so I could tell them to stop spamming me, unless I register an account...
I had tried for a long time to get linkedin to stop sending me invitations.
I finally found a solution.
Every linkedin email was forwarded by my mail filters to the CEO office.
Afrer a month of forwarding emails and all replies from linkedin.com to
jweiner@linkedin.com I finally got a phone call from an executive secretary and we agreed. They will not send me invitations and I will not forward them.
Seems like an endless stream of spam does not fit in to his business model.
Remember when there were job postings that were exclusive to LinkedIn? They're gone. Have been for some time now.
Want to have your news feed set to only the recent news? Forget it. It defaults to "Top" (i.e., the "Popular") posts by default. In fact, you can't change that default. You have to view the Top posts before you can change it to Recent. This tells me that LI has decided that it wants to cater to Facebook users more interested in what's popular today. That's not why I joined years ago.
What's up with the news feed only showing you 10-20 posts before prompting you to show more, and then when you click on "Show more" you can see more but you're sent back to the top of your feed so you have to scroll through the original set of posts before you get to the new ones. Similarly, what's the point of indicating that there are a small number, say, four replies to an article, only showing three, and making the user click on show more to see the fourth?
Want to see who visited your profile? Sorry. 99% of the people who visit it are people who don't want to be known to you. So please stop the damned come-ons to "upgrade" to a Premium membership so I can see who those visitors were. Because I did that once and, guess what... I still couldn't see who those visitors were. The histogram telling me that 21 of the 25 visitors were recruiters, and that the other 4 were members with the job title "[fill-in-the-blank]" and that I'm not allowed to know who they were is oh so helpful to people who might be trying to tend to their career by using LI. Oh wait... no it's not.
Please, please drop the damned posts about what's "trending in my geographic area". The vast majority of the time, it's not something that would likely be of interest in my geographic area.
Fix whatever "algorithm" decides that the content of my profile detailing several decades of UNIX experience is going to make me the least bit interested in seeing an ad for an elementary course in shell scripting.
Seriously... who designs this crap? LI was once known as "Facebook with a tie". Now it's just a Facebook wannabe.
Finally...
I doubt that any of these types are reading this article and its responses but I don't "live" in LI. I come in, I look around, and I exit. (I'm betting that I'm far from being the only one who uses LI this way.) If you want to send me private messages about job postings via LI's InMail feature, you'll more than likely miss me. My profile has my email address. Use it if you want to get in touch with me. Sending me an InMail tells me you didn't look at all of my profile. I'm not going to have a browser window/tab devoted exclusively to LI all day and visible on all my virtual desktops on the off chance that someone might send me a message. Yes, LI usually sends a regular email to let you know you have an InMail but this mainly ticks off the person who now has to go back onto LI to reply. Frankly, InMail is one of the dumbest features of LI. (Same goes for the private messaging feature on FB.)
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
i have 43% interest in linkedin.com. you gotta problem...call or text me...480.251.4729 any ?'s.
All social media suck, LinkedIn isn't alone. All of them have flaws and dumb features, all of them are just interested in gathering our information to male $$$$. I have a profle just for jobs no socialisation at all. Btw I don't have fb, Twitter or anything similar.
I personally have only added people that Iâ(TM)ve met in reality and Iâ(TM)ve yet to receive a single spam message. I have managed to use it to keep in touch with people who have got me substantial amounts of work and I use it to improve my reputation through publishing articles with a lot of success.
LinkedIn is great. I've applied to jobs with nothing but a link to my LinkedIn profile, gotten a phone interview, then had the job without even doing an in-person. I'd much rather "maintain" my LinkedIn profile by changing my job status and adding skills/keywords every couple years than bother with hand-crafted resumes for each potential employer. Hell, I get offers via LinkedIn about 5-6 times monthly for things ranging from jobs through collaboration AND it encourages employers to give you references or check off "does this person have experience with x" so you don't have to deal with that aspect either. It's easily the best extant site for asocial nerds.
Never send recruiters messages when you're high...
Lawrence Person (lawrencepersonh@gmailh.com (remove all "h"s to mail)
http://www.lawrenceperson.com/
How many suitcases full of cash did Hillary take from Chinese intelligence operatives?
even more now that Microsoft has got its sticky mits on it.
Like MySpace, LinkedIn had its time and place and that time is well passed it's use by date.
It should be put out to grass and left to die.
I am not so much into walled gardens. So, yes, it sucks.
I also have no interest in poor people contacting me in mail bombs.
Linked-in is good enough to kill a few minutes when I am bored at work. The signal-to-noise ratio is better than say at Facebook but it is still just that, killing time. However if I really want to connect with new interesting people or learn something I use Meetup.
Iâ(TM)m sure there are some kind of studies out there that have been done on the utility of LinkedIn. Maybe something that looks at who gets the most value out of it, whether certain roles are more sought-after via the platform, that sort of thing. Instead, we have a fluff piece, an attention-whoring bit of tripe that does not serve the geek intellect of Slashdot readers. I want 1997 back, please.
That said, I get use out of the platform. I have the job title of CISO, and recently have been contacted through the platform by a headhunter in a process that wound up with me being offered a much more significant CISO role (an order of magnitude more reports, for one, and a much broader remit). And it all started just because I indicated my willingness (not even eagerness) to discuss new opportunities via an automated switch on LinkedIn.
Of course, I have a lot of the kinds of trash invites too. I ignore (and indicate that I donâ(TM)t know) anyone who cold-contacts me, except in the case of a recruiter who has specific information about a specific role and clearly explains why Iâ(TM)m being contacted as part of the initial invite. That seems to work well for me, so I guess a lot of the utility of the platform derives from how you use it.
I have 0% interest in linkedin... no
So you want to outlaw big gov and kill small gov...
You sir, are just a lowly anarchist.
Linkedin is somewhat usefull but it tells to many strangers what goes on in my professional life, and so my negotiating position with new employers or clients will suck. It's a privacy hole that I would like to plug but am not sure what the consequences are.
Next?
I'm serious, I also had my doubts when joining it, and yes the spam is annoying as hell.
But I managed to land 2 jobs now thanks to it (and in the 2nd one I did not apply, I was contacted by a recruiter) so I wouldn't call it useless, at least in my personal experience.
I've never met a recruiter on there.
You must be the only person in the world who can claim that...
I'm not in Linkedin, or Facebook, or Google+ or twitter, hell I even use Slashdot mostly anonymously. I even stopped using IRC. But Google recruiters still managed to find me. The job they offered was not specifically to my interest, but I was surprised how they found me. Most likely either from Debian packaging lists or github. Basically you can't do honest open source work without getting recruiters to attack you.
Oh I'm sorry, the problem was that recruiters don't contact you? How is that a problem or how is that even possible if you are in Linkedin? Perhaps you just don't have any skills that are needed?
i just got there for the news. when i go to google news its fluff and about trump. cnn, nytimes as well as rightish publications are all about trump. facebook is fluff. the only news im interested in is an occassional slashdot and occasional linkedin. i got rid of facebook last year. gmail and linkedin are my only social media accounts. i dont even own a phone for the last 6 years and i still make 6 figures. so i dont text and not available after work hours. you too can escape the matrix
Unlike the author of the original post, I have been contacted by recruiters and consulting firms about jobs. Some of my contacts have opened the door for interviews. I have built a professional network of folks that I know or have worked with. I have added other folks that went to school where I did in the same academic fields of study so I felt confident of their abilities and that the bio was not BS. Now there are people on there with no business being there, and you get socilitations for products or services and that does bother me. Like all social networking tools, figure out how to use it to your advantage.
Personally, I don't like LinkedIn because it imposes its own ideas of what a good candidate should be like. I think a lot of social media focuses on superficial appearances, large network size, a laundry list of "certificates" or academic credentials and personality appeal rather than technical skills or experience. When I am on LinkedIn, I notice the most competent people have the simplest profiles that look more like a resume than a facebook entry. And have we even thought of the possibility that LinkedIn can be used to screen candidates based on less appealing criteria, like race, gender, sexual preference, etc? I resent that we are "expected" to have a LinkedIn presence by some colleagues or recruiters, much like how I resent the expectation that we must use facebook by some of our relatives. I'm essentially handing free marketing data over to a company and being given the "homework" of keeping a profile up to date when I would much rather just post my resume in a database and let it speak for itself. My profile picture and how many friends I have should be irrelevant to any job I want to get unless I am a "social media marketer."
Using LinkedIn or any similar tool requires real-life skills at networking. If you're bad at networking with live humans, you'll probably be bad at networking with LinkedIn. (I am bad at networking, and it's not LinkedIn's fault.)
Linked-in has done NOTHING to help me get a better job. All linked-in is good for is imposter self-promotion. I've found most of the people I was linked to never responded to messages or anything. I dropped them 2 years ago like a bad habit.
Its like Facebook and all these social networks. They remotely match you with people who are supposed to be a good match. I do not know of too many companies who seek out people through LinkedIn and its much like these job sites like Indeed, they don't work very well and in cases like Indeed you can apply and rarely get a respectful receipt that your resume had been reviewed. Job networking does work, just not with sites that claim that's what they do.
If the Author has never had a request from a recruiter, then SURPRISE; their profile sucks.
Instead of blaming the tool, get someone to read your profile and help you fix it. And as others have said, don't accept every request. If I don't the person, or they have no connection of interest, i say no. Just because they know someone I know, doesn't mean I want to be connected to them. I have turned down a dozen in the last month because they were a connection of an old college friend - they have nothing to offer me other then that.
The other possibility besides a poor profile, is that this user has a good profile in a field that has no job openings - spinning wheel operator or typewriter repair maybe?
The thing I notice over and over again on Slashdot is that the people who are willing to live in a congested city with an hour commute time get jobs and usually the others don't. This is a big problem. I think people go on LinkedIn expecting for it to somehow solve these problems because social networking; but it can't force or even encourage employers to think out of the box when it comes to location.
Laws are rules for the court, but merely a bottom bar to hit for life. Think beyond laws in your actions always.
As a consulting software architect, I've found LinkedIn very useful. My connections on the network have resulted in a several contracts, and one full-time position. I've also connected fellow peers to recruiters that resulted them in getting jobs/contracts, and I've mentored people.
It's all about how you use the too, and what you respect out of it. I use LinkedIn for it's original intended purpose, Networking. Nothing else.
First, don't accept every single connection request you receive. I have my own person criteria for accepting a request:
* Have I worked with them directly/indirectly on a current or past project, or will I be working with them in a future/new project?
* Are they asking for mentorship and have a well written introduction?
* Are they director/executive level for a Top 100 company?
* Recruiter(s) who I have personally worked with or come from a respected agency.
Pretty much everyone else gets ignored, even family and friends if they are not in the technology field or directly related to my industry. If you accept too many non-related contacts, yes you're going to get a lot of spam. I also never browser the homepage feed, it is of no interests to me.
Not sure of the quality of the submission but I agree with the premise! It's a social network but lacking the social side as far as I can tell. Maybe I'm just not using it right but I have no idea how people would... It seems to be useful only for recruitment agencies who get access to profiles that are not just stuffed with keywords but might even have endorsements from peers as well. So yeah, I'm using it wrong because I'm not constantly marketing myself and networking!
I have recruiters reach out to me fairly often on LinkedIn, and I see relevant job postings there fairly often (especially if I'm willing to relocate or work remotely). If it's not useful then maybe you should go elsewhere?
By comparison, I've found ladders.com to be pretty damned worthless. I applied to a job there once and then they started sending me info on all kinds of irrelevant postings (I recall they once notified me of an opening at a local railroad switch yard conducting trains). After a while I realized that they did a terrible job of parsing my CV; once I corrected that the FP rate has gone down but so has total volume.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
LinkedIn is far from perfect and I it has definitely gotten worse in recent years, but...
I can attribute the past 10 years of my employment, across four different jobs, directly to LinkedIn. If LinkedIn did not exist then I likely would have found any of these jobs through other means.
That being said... if you get no value from LinkedIn, perhaps you should stop using it. I reached that point with Facebook several years ago and I've never missed it.
Why are you accepting all invitations on there? Are your parents, siblings, old buddies from high school, etc all in the same field you work in? If not then why are they in your linkedin network? Your'e supposed to be building a network on there that helps you get your next job. There is a reason to be selective on who you accept on there; your profile becomes less useful (in terms of how it reflects you) as you add more people who don't have anything to do with your current or next profession.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Cultivate only relationships with people you actually know and recruiters. Sort of like I assume reasonable people do on FB.
How did Microsoft buying LinkedIn affect your experience?
4 Reasons Microsoft Wasted $26.2 Billion To Buy LinkedIn.
3 Quotes:
1) "... there is no reason to believe that Microsoft has the strategic skills needed to revive LinkedIn's growth."
2) "Nadella touted the idea that business people working on projects will love the way the combined company will be able to spam them with more targeted newsfeeds! Is this the kind of magic that $26.2 billion buys? It sounds like a good reason for me to dump my LinkedIn account."
3) "This deal makes no sense to me and in the wake of its efforts to force people like me to upgrade to Windows 10 malware style, I am beginning to question Microsoft's governance."
...Because it's LinkedIn it's super easy to slip past any and all defenses against this spam.....
No email from LinkedIn domain(s) is allowed. The excessive amounts of spam I received is the reason why.
You know what a Chinese Oak Table is, right?
It looks like Oak. It has texture. It has grain. It even feels like Oak to someone who doesn't really know what Oak is. It's fucking heavy too and resonates when you knock on it. And for a few weeks after you sit it in a kitchen it's happy and people love your new oak table until, one day, a few weeks in, you spill your tea on it.
And wiping the tea off, some of the painted on wood-grain comes off on the cloth too.
As time gooes by, the texture plastic surface that pretended to be oak grain starts to bubble and delaminate, revealing the mixture of wood-shavings and PVA glue beneath. And the lead blocks buried inside that gave it the sense of weight.
That's Chinese Oak. And the moment you realise you've bought Chinese Oak, you realise you've bought utter crap.
Linkedin is full of people like that. They look great on the surface. They make themselves look great on the surface. And Linkedin is the condensation of these people. It's where they all congregate to get noticed. That's their sole skill, because that's the only real skill that's required in the modern day environment. That's what actually gets you hired by HR.
Maybe I'm being bitter. But the only time I've ever had any sort of success with job interviews is where I spoke to the people who actually did the work, rather than the HR department.
So there I was, scribbling down some notes off the PC screen by hand, when I reached for the keyboard and Ctrl-S'd.
I landed a great paying job from it.
It's all in how you use it.
I use LinkedIn. My current job I would not have were it not for LI. The recruiter for the company found me through key word searches (I asked him after the fact out of curiosity). I find that it's a good way of keeping in touch with former coworkers. It's sort of the "professional" version of Facebook.
I know this is going to sound terrible but I never accept invitations from Indian recruiters unless I know them personally. I have nothing against people from India it's just that in my experience every recruiter I have had contact with from there has been a low ball bottom feeder. At the risk of throwing the baby out with the bathwater it's just a decision I made.
Having said all that, I do notice that it has become more spammy recently. it seems to have coincided with Microsoft taking over.
Now that I'm settled in to my current job and not really looking for something new, LinkedIn is more like a tool to keep in touch. More just to see what other people I know are doing.
A quote from a Slashdot comment: It started going downhill about six months after Microsoft bought it.
A comment on that comment: "uSoft is the kiss of death."
I had the opportunity to be the 2nd employee of a company that later had an evaluation over over a billion dollars at some point. It allowed this start-up to find people quickly without spending too much money. It's a tool like any other that allows you to be in the driver seat .
I tend not to accept recruiter invitations, but I do like keeping tabs on former coworkers. 70% of all jobs are found through personal contacts.
Since Microsoft took it over, yes, it sucks bigtime. Although.. the worst thing about it is all the people who just send connection requests to everyone. There is no value in your list of connections if none of them KNOWS you and your abilties. There is no value to having a connection who knows nothing about your professionally, and you provide no value to them if you don't know them and their abilities professionally... but like on social media, a lot of people treat it as a "contest" to see who has the most connections. I have a feeling a lot of people think that MORE connections means more likelihood of getting hired etc.., rather than having good quality connections who can vouch for your ability and knowledge due to experience working with you.
From my perspective, social networks are working quite well. They distract everyone else while I get work done. It's pretty easy to appear productive when you're being compared to all these people getting interrupted by LinkedIn emails, Facebook messages and tweets all the time. It's a lack of impulse control. The worst, though, is they all think they have a right to interrupt me while I'm working to ask me something they could have looked up online, or could've thought through themselves. Now I've taken to saying, "I think you could've worked that our for yourself." They're starting to get the hint.
"I have never let my schooling interfere with my education." - Mark Twain
I got tired of endless e-mails asking me to do stuff I wasn't comfortable with. Where I live is not very popular to get a job using LinkedIn.
"and accept everyone who adds me because I don't know why I wouldn't"
Stopped reading there
"Made up/misattributed quote that makes me look smart. I am on
Eventually all of these Social Media platforms adopt each other's features, blend, get overused/abused and then "suck".
It used to be Facebook was the 'white-pages', and LinkedIn was the 'yellow-pages', by analogy to those huge wastes of trees called "phone books"?
Then everyone tried to share their own ideas, socialize, share pictures of their lunch. Twitter, Instagram and all provided the same features: news-feed, personal linkages, sharing pictures/videos, chat, and so on and all the use-cases all blended together.
Now web 3.0 is here, someone is probably building the next "thing" to capture society's need to socialize by playing with new toys, and maybe FB and LI will go back to being the online global phone book.
Using LinkedIn and Facebook may be perceived these says as a practical necessity for many people, of course. There is such a thing as social networking effects. But using them is still overall a bad thing for society -- even ignoring the personal mental health effects: https://www.medicaldaily.com/s...
Essentially, profiling (or ratting on) your colleagues and friends/family and defining all your relationships to them to a central authority on an ongoing basis is in some sense immoral in a democracy when other decentralized alternatives exist (e.g. email, IRC, personal websites,and more). It is immoral because it pushes too much power (as information) into a few centers instead of keeping that power decentralized across society. It does not matter if those centers are industrial or governmental.
Giving up such information voluntarily to big central authorities is the kind of thing that anyone who went to public school in the 1960s or 1970s would have been taught reflected the values of Soviet Russia and its pervasive intelligence apparatus (e.g. listening in on all phone calls) -- not the values of a democratic USA.
As Mark Zuckerberg himself said, it is just dumb:
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/...
Zuck: Yeah so if you ever need info about anyone at Harvard
Zuck: Just ask
Zuck: I have over 4,000 emails, pictures, addresses, SNS
[Redacted Friend's Name]: What? How'd you manage that one?
Zuck: People just submitted it.
Zuck: I don't know why.
Zuck: They "trust me"
Zuck: Dumb fucks
Of course, given such a high level of informational immorality over the past decade (trading privacy for convenience), the world indeed may have changed. It is possible there is no going back -- even as various people, myself included, have worked towards more decentralized communication alternatives.
Instead, we may have to consider, say, David Brin's "Transparent Society" as a different option. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
Of course, there is likely a healthy balance of meshwork and hierarchy needed, so not all one or the other:
http://www.t0.or.at/delanda/me...
"Indeed, one must resist the temptation to make hierarchies into villains and meshworks into heroes, not only because, as I said, they are constantly turning into one another, but because in real life we find only mixtures and hybrids, and the properties of these cannot be established through theory alone but demand concrete experimentation."
No easy answers... But a big potential problem...
See also for the past:
https://ibmandtheholocaust.com...
"IBM and the Holocaust is the stunning story of IBM's strategic alliance with Nazi Germany -- beginning in 1933 in the first weeks that Hitler came to power and continuing throughout World War II. As the Third Reich embarked upon its plan of conquest and genocide, IBM and its subsidiaries helped create enabling technologies, step-by-step, from the identification and cataloging programs of the 1930s to the selections of the 1940s."
And for the present and near future, China's Social Credit system:
https://www.theguardian.com/wo...
"Chinaâ(TM)s social credit system, a big-data system for monitoring and shaping business and citizensâ(TM) behaviour, is reaching beyond Chinaâ(TM)s borders to impact foreign companies, according to new research. The system, which has been compared to an Orwellian tool of mass surveillance, is an ambitious work in progress: a series of big data and AI-enabled processes that effectively grant subjects a social credit score based on their socia
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
LinkedIn is very useful.
TechCrunch isn't.
I read LinkedIn a lot.
I have never once been to TechCrunch.
LinkedIn worked for me, but, I guess we can't expect much from journalists. I mean, they can't even play video games well.
Change is certain; progress is not obligatory.
Fucking Christ, if you think it sucks, why are you even there? Why is this a story?
Anything else we can solve for you today?
LinkedIn used to be *the* network used by professionals. After Microsoft bought it, they turned it basically into a white-collar Facebook.
Tired of FB/Google censorship? Visit UNCENSORED!
When I found a potential job (outside LinkedIn) I look at that company on LinkedIn
Sometimes I found that someone I know works or used to work for that company.
Then I approach them directly with questions.
This permits getting inside information, like why someone quit the job you are about to take.
LinkedIn is the defacto, it's a great app, great functionality and is always updating.
Get some mental health help, dude. You're fucking manic. Depakote will fix you and make it so people actually like you instead of just making fun of you all the time.
Fucking psycho
I have 0% interest in LinkedIn. Bada Bing Bada Boom.
I use LinkedIn primarily as a place to store a connected online CV / portfolio including links to projects and companies I've worked on, papers I've contributed to and talks I've given. Additionally, the endorsements I have from colleagues and ex-colleagues "prove" to recruiters that I really do have the skills I claim to have. It's basically an "extended" CV - everything I can't fit on my actual, normal CV.
I have never gotten a job directly over LinkedIn, but indirectly - in the sense that I include a link to my LinkedIn profile in my PDF CV - I guess it may have been helpful. And I do like the "peace of mind" I get from the regular recruiter requests - even if I don't take them up on their offers, it's nice to know I could.
All that said, the LinkedIn UX is still a cluttered nightmare. It's gotten better, but there's still just too much going on on the screen and it still feels far from modern. Xing (LinkedIn's neck-and-neck competitor in the German-speaking world) while slowly suffering from feature creep as well, is still *much* cleaner and prettier in its presentation of user profiles - LinkedIn UX designers should take note.
LinkedIn's worked for me, and I've seen it work for friends networking through me for jobs they want.
But I only ever, ever add folks I know personally; if I wouldn't recognize you on the street, you're not on my contacts list there.
I find LinkedIn's newsfeed to be medium-bad, but as far as "resume service", it works damn well.
No, he just wants to outlaw traitors. There are those among them, Trump included, who side with Russia over our own intelligence repeatedly. These people are obviously compromised, and that makes them traitors.
He never said anything about entitlement or regulations (big government), you're just an idiot
There is an article here about building a better linkedin (or similar) with a sort of cybernetic system of feedback and control to keep down the spam and keep up the quality.
https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
I use LinkedIn with incredible success. However, I don't limit myself to people I shook hands with. By strategically building your connections you can form a powerful resource. I do not connect with just anyone. So if there is no image, or less than 500 connections, typically I will reject. Sometimes I will call the workplace listed and verify it is a real person.
First make your profile look great. Professional photo recommended.
Connect with your inner circle first, then some ideal prospects just like you would a Facebook ad campaign. Then connect to your dream clients. Connect to some Recruiters in your field. Connect to your heroes or Idols or favorite authors.
Then comment on posts, like their articles, if there's something you can do to help them offered to do so for free. Build new friendships. Wish them a happy birthday. Etc etc.
Reach out to some of them for advice. Perhaps message a dream client and say hey what do you think about this problem our companies trying to solve. Any input on how to make the product better?
Go to the recruiters and refer people you know that are unemployed to them while you're still employed. When you become unemployed you will already have a relationship with this recruiter or recruiters.
At the end of the day it is about building relationships. I still have my tight Inner circle but I also have thousands of passive relationships with occasional direct communication. When I think of a way to pass a referral or something like that, I do.
When I need something, I have enough of a relationship to casually ask.
Sometimes, I have found new best friends, mentors, joint venture opportunities etc.
It is a super powerful business tool, if it is treated like a business.
New book on this topic coming to Amazon September 26th 2018
Growth Hacking. Strategically grow your business connections from Zero to 10k in 365 days
- Jess
"durrrrr, it's ok that this guy probably broke the law and is completely ignoring lots of standard behavior, because his opponent could have done the same thing!"
That's really not how this works. A hypothetical crime doesn't in any way negate an actual crime. Hell, we could find out Hillary took money from foreign powers, that still wouldn't vindicate Trump, you fucking whataboutist moron
To me, LinkedIn is an example of horrible bad design and practice for the following reasons:
Most of the people I know of who have used LinkedIn for developing their career could have used other mechanisms and gotten better results for the same effort.
LinkedIn was useful in its early days, but now it's just another data source/ad revenue tool for Microstuff. I just deleted my account today because I don't want no mo' spam, ma'm
I get probably about 4 or 5 new LinkedIn contacts a week from recruiters in my field. Granted, I'm in data science, which is hot right now, but I suspect that it does also depend not only on the demand for skills you have, but also on how you present yourself.
Of course, whether that is useful or just annoying depends on whether you
(a) are open to new jobs,
(b) have a fairly clear idea of what you are (and are not) looking for - if you can't articulate to a recruiter what you want, they can't identify the right opportunities from among their clients. On the other hand, a conversation with a good recruiter can help you figure out what you really want, which will help you find the right job and convince the right manager that you are a match for the job
(c) have the time to sort through all the requests to find the *right* opportunities, or recruiters who will listen well enough to send you information about the right opportunities; I definitely need CRM software to keep track of them (and LinkedIn, despite trying to keep you inside its interface, and having some elements of a CRM, is not a substitute for real CRM software).
(d) are knowledgable enough about recruiters to understand how their interests differ from yours.
Recruiters also make (c) harder by limiting the details they give out until they get you on the phone. I understand that some companies use recruiters to avoid being flooded with applications, and that recruiters don't get paid if you go around them and apply directly to the company, but I've basically made a rule that if I ignore recruiter invitations without a note, or where the note doesn't give me at least one piece of information (whether it is a job description, or at least the industry and job title) to catch my interest.
As for (d):
Outside recruiters are paid by companies when they place someone in a job, typically a fraction of your first year's salary. That determines their interest. In a way, they are analogous to a stock broker, who pretends to give financial advice, but whose job is not to help you make money or share insight, but to sell stocks on commission (or because their company is the ones selling them).
Just as a bad stock broker just tries to get everyone to buy what his firm is selling, and not be around when people lose money, a poor recruiter may...
* spam lots of people, minimizing the effort they make with each one but trying to make up for it with volume
* repost open listings to their contact, even if they have no contact with the company, and therefore little or no value to the job seeker
* bombard a good prospect (someone they think would make a good candidate) with lists of companies and positions, hoping that one sticks, rather than trying to find a good match
* never get back to you
On the other hand, a outside good recruiter like a good stock broker, who knows that the best business comes from referrals , and that it is in his/her interest to make both clients (companies) and job seekers happy. A good recruiter may
* tell you about a company or opening you might not otherwise hear about; given the demands of my current job, recruiters are one of the main ways I find out interesting start-ups which are hiring. Not that it's the best way, but it can be less effort than doing research yourself (and therefore more efficient)
* listen and try to understand what interests and motivates you, and find an opportunity which matches,
* tell you about an opportunity you might like, but might not have heard about
* give you some insight into the salary range - unlike an internal recruiter, they make more money when the company pays more, so sharing your current salary with them is less risky than sharing it with the company, who doesn't want to pay you any more than they have to.
* give you some insight into what the company or hiring manager is looking for, so you can better prepare for a phone screen
* after the phone screen, give you some insight into what impression you made, so y
I have had a linkedin account for a long time. I have been looking for a real software job since 10/06/2001. Still do not have one. Ok so what is the problem with linkedin. WELL. Linkedin is a community of under employed people who are all looking for opportunities, which mostly do not exist. And never will. So yes linkedin is a major waste of time. So to that end I do it maybe once or twice a year. More if I am bored or maybe I want to know if my favorite recruiter is still unemployed.
Hey APK, if you're tired of people impersonating you, WHY DON'T YOU MAKE AN ACCOUNT? So long as you continue to post as Anonymous Coward while bashing people who actually have an account as being "fake", people are going to conclude, quite correctly, that you are completely fucking retarded.
I hate LinkedIn. I open it out of habit and accept everyone who adds me because I don't know why I wouldn't
There's part of your problem. The idea is that you're supposed to accept invites only from people you actually KNOW! Since you seem to accept all spam, OF COURSE it's going to suck for you!
I've always wondered how much spam I get not directly from Linkedin, but because of having a profile on Linkedin.
Most companies have a system for assigning emails to employees. So if the spammer knows that Example Inc. will assign John Doe the email address jdoe@example.com, then the spammer just has to harvest the the names of people who work at Example Inc. off of Linkedin and assemble their email addresses. That would explain the amount of spam I get at work despite almost never giving my email address out to people outside the company.
With that said, I haven't counted out one of HR's numerous "business partners" simply selling off the list of employee emails either.
My last two jobs were via LinkedIn, as a result of direct contact from project managers (not recruiters). One had worked with me previously, the other was a 2nd level connection. The aphorism "it's not what you know, it's who you know" seems to be true; without LinkedIn these managers might not have been aware of my availability.
I pretty much only link with people I've worked with personally or can highly recommend based on my own experience with their work.
I have a giant meaningless network on it. Never got an interview not a mind a job from it.
I recently ended none months of unemployment, in part thanks to LinkedIn. Here's what I learned...
Recruiting firms don't help because they post template positions to get resumes. The site itself harvests postings from Dice and other places, which is where a lot of the spam comes from. Then there are crafty people who also have set up bots to repost positions with the quick apply so they can get your resume and do Lord-knows-what with it. Most recruiters (>90%) who have sent me a message through LinkedIn are either Indian tech firms or working for major recruiting firms and have been in their job less than a year and are just doing a mail blast so they can hot their numbers.
I got a job sort of through LinkedIn. I did some social networking through it, met a good recruiter, had coffee with her and talked about what I was looking for, and she found it for me. She also returned my calls (unlike most recruiters) and actually took the coffee time to figure me out.
I love my new job.
I use LinkedIn as a research tool. If I'm looking for a job I use it to see who I already know at the company and reach out to find out the real dirt. It could also get them a hiring bonus, which is nice.
I also use it to check on company hires, especially in the executive ranks in my division. I've learned some interesting stuff that way and have been able to adjust my expectations accordingly.
As for the slew of recruiters sending me job posts that have nothing to do with my skills and want to connect? They get ignored until I get bored and clean out my inbox by deleting the messages and declining their invites.
your using it wrong
I've had Linkedin blocked for spam since pretty much the day they started spamming back in 2002.
As a test, I went to their website from a throwaway account they were blasting at, to find that the only way to stop them sending "invitations" (99.99% of which were from people I'd never heard of, let alone met) was to create an account - except you can't even do it then, so that account got trashed.
Can you say fraudulent behaviour? But that's what you expect from spammers.
GDPR laws haven't stopped them spamming EU citizens either - which is going to explode in their faces. They can't try and pin this on "Your friend said it was OK to send this" as that's specifically NOT allowed under EU data protection laws. The spam's still coming in despite the prospect of $400 million fines.
It's just TOO MUCH.
I have a long enough career at this point that I never, ever have to look for work actively. I have to actively avoid LinkedIn to avoid getting pestered every day or two with another recruiter trying to poach me.
Thing is, that's not special! If you live in a major city or even if you're willing to relocate, and you have a desireable skill like web development, you'll be inundated with offers. Just fill out the details on your LinkedIn page and do basically nothing else.
No, I don't work for LinkedIn nor do I have any stake in you caring about them. But yeah, from my data-point-of-one experience, it works VERY well. TOO well.
I use it to generate a detailed resume and have up to date contact info for references. It also is how I keep in touch with some former colleagues that I was never friends with but still care about on a human level. They are not people I would ever have invited to be friends on Facebook, not to mention I deleted my Facebook account, but I still like to know where they are working at and catch up with them from time to time to chat about the industry.
There isn't a month that goes by where a recruiter doesn't try to get me to add them to my LinkeIn profile. I don't though, because the last thing I need is more recruiter spam.
Having worked as a Systems Administrator though, you tend to have a positive impact on the lives of many people beyond your own field of employment. At least, if you are doing your job right you do.
When you have been working for a quarter of a century it gets hard to keep track of some of the finer details involved and it would be extremely difficult to keep in touch with some of these people by phone or mail, that's where LinkedIn shines.
-==- Buy a Mac and leave me alone!
You are all linkedin whores. I've been on linkedin for 15 or 20 years. I have zero connections. That's on purpose. I don't accept any link requests. I still get tons of linkedin spam. I realized what a steaming pile linkedin was when I received a link request from my sister and I asked her and she said she never asked for a link.
Unless you're in sales, I can't see any value in linkedin. I will probably never log in to that mess again.
OP is retarded, or in the wrong field, I get an average of one legit offer every couple of weeks through linked in, my last two jobs where from a random message on linked in where my profile matched a few keywords they were looking for.
Linked in ROCKS
This is the only time I can recall Betteridge's law being wrong.
This comment is my opinion and does not represent an official position of Donald Trump or others I do not work for
Did you even read what linkedin is about? It's NOT about accepting all requests. It's about building your network. My network is frickin' strong. I only ever accept or make connections to people that are successful as I am. So if I need help I can look around to people that are either linked to me or linked to people that are linked to me and get things done. It's awesome when it's used right.
Those that think it's just a business facebook totally miss what it's for. You might as well use your screw driver to drive nails into a board.
... if I was unable to find a job for myself? I dunno. I've been continuously employed since I was in high school, and I always get the job I want just by talking to people in real life. /shrug They keep telling me that "getting a job in 2018 is not like getting a job in 1995" but it is, at least for me.
I do mention on LinkedIn that I am not moving. When the Googlers message me, I always reply how cool it is they are opening an office in my city. LOL that always ends the spam quickly. After a few of those, they seem to give up. /shrug
It's not so much that LinkedIn sucks, it's just that it's irrelevant. Like MySpace or Monster.com or something. LOL.
I put the link to this post at the bottom of my profile.
Tracy Johnson
Old fashioned text games hosted below:
http://empire.openmpe.com/
BT
OP wrote:
"It's like Facebook without the benefit of maybe seeing a picture of someone's award-winning chili or dog"
What you mean is:
It's like Facebook WITH the benefit of NEVER seeing a picture of someone's award-winning chili or dog
[full disclosure: would never use facebook or linkedin]
If you work in corporate America, LinkedIn is just about the only way to connect to your co-workers. Generally, when you leave a company, you don't really a way to stay in touch with your co-workers because corporate policies make your contacts so they are not portable. Things like Slack or email stay with the company. It's widely know that other social media such as facebook is for personal friends and not really a way to connect with your colleagues - mainly because people want to maintain some degree of separation between their personal life and work. So what's left is LinkedIn. The value in keeping your professional contacts is pretty obvious. If you ever need a reference, or want to job network, it's pretty much like a Rolodex. Also, every recruitment firm is active on LinkedIn, so there are plenty of job opportunities. I do tend to the think attempting sales on LinkedIn is mostly annoying and I doubt if that channel is very effective. But as a modern Rolodex, it's really just down how you use it and who you connect with.