Slashdot Mirror
Ask Slashdot: Is LinkedIn Still Relevant?
LinkedIn had 590 million members -- though back in 2016 Microsoft conceded that less than 25% of the service's members were active. Yet CNBC recently shared estimates that 95% of recruiters are using LinkedIn to find candidates, and touted a new tool called "LinkedIn Hashtags" which lets companies highlight policies like "#dogfriendly" or "#freelunch".
But is LinkedIn really helpful for job-seekers? An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: I'm on unemployment and am looking for a new job, and I've been told "Oh, you need to be on LinkedIn if you want to be taken seriously!" So I go there, and it looks like Facebook or something, wants to scrape my email contacts, upload pictures, and so on.
Is LinkedIn really necessary, or is it just a ruse to get me to give them all sorts of personal information like all other social media sites?
"I'm also unemployed and looking for a job," adds another anonymous Slashdot reader, "and have all my crap on Linkedin and Indeed, and have been using them to apply left and right. If they aren't useful anymore I'm essentially sitting on my hands doing nothing." But Slashdot reader tomhath insists that LinkedIn "was never relevant. Their motto was that you didn't exist if you're not there -- but that was only their marketing hype, not reality."
Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Is LinkedIn still relevant?
But is LinkedIn really helpful for job-seekers? An anonymous Slashdot reader writes: I'm on unemployment and am looking for a new job, and I've been told "Oh, you need to be on LinkedIn if you want to be taken seriously!" So I go there, and it looks like Facebook or something, wants to scrape my email contacts, upload pictures, and so on.
Is LinkedIn really necessary, or is it just a ruse to get me to give them all sorts of personal information like all other social media sites?
"I'm also unemployed and looking for a job," adds another anonymous Slashdot reader, "and have all my crap on Linkedin and Indeed, and have been using them to apply left and right. If they aren't useful anymore I'm essentially sitting on my hands doing nothing." But Slashdot reader tomhath insists that LinkedIn "was never relevant. Their motto was that you didn't exist if you're not there -- but that was only their marketing hype, not reality."
Leave your own thoughts in the comments. Is LinkedIn still relevant?
Betteridge's law definitely applies here.
No sig today...
It doesn't exactly hurt to be on there. As a developer you're better off having a Github account with proof you've committed something, anything.
I was thinking about this a while back. Came up with some suggestions for "the next LinkedIn". We could do so much better, and there are reasons to put the effort in that will benefit everyone.
https://blog.eutopian.io/building-a-better-linkedin/
I mean, employers just throw out most resumes they get for an opening. So does that mean you should no longer have or update your resumes?
LinkedIn is basically an online resume repository. Being active on LinkedIn doesn't mean you can ignore other good advice on job hunting (networking, etc.).
The relevance & usefulness of all "social media" sites is entirely based on hype and bullshit.
If they can convince enough people that they seem relevant then to those people they are.
As for LinkedIn, I've had to flag the site as producing spam as they repeatedly ignore requests to NOT send invites.
* by social media I'm referring to all sites where your data is their product.
is prety much like facebook, so it might have value for data miners.
No, same as it always was, the only truly effective way to jobhunt is through networking. Folks are realizing that having a snazzy hipster profile on linkedin is the same as masturbation, feels great for yourself and you think the outside world cares, but it doesn't.
Microsoft bought a dead parrot. And to add insult to injury, paid a super premium over the market price for dead parrots.
I've used LinkedIn to hire lots of professional people across various projects. Its certainly more 'relevant' than any other website in my experience.
And if you aren't on there, it does raise the question of why you aren't. And that, despite me wishing otherwise, raises a bit of a red flag.
... as a friend of me told me that it was a great way to keep a professional contact as people changed organizations and therefore changed email.
However, I think I've sent about 5 or so messages through LinkedIn to people I used to work with. That's not a lot.
I do, however, get a ton of connection requests from recruiters world wide. Nothing as ever come out of that.
So... the net value so far is, I think, is negative.
Why am I still in there? Well, partly because I'm too lazy to leave, but also because I'm "afraid to miss out". At some point I will probably realize that I'm not actually missing anything important.
Maybe that point in time is... right now.
The sad state of affairs is there's nothing working any better, either.
the irony of asking that at slashdot of all places.
linkedin is relevant -- just keep up with some coworkers and hr people so when you need a job you can reach out, or so that when your friends need a job you can reach out and hope they return the favor
By and large, language is a tool for concealing the truth. -- George Carlin
You need a professional presence, they provide a repository. Curate that carefully (but with as little personal information as possible), ignore the rest.
Simple answer: No.
Whenever someone tells me that using Linkedin is mandatory to find a job, it's almost always a recruiter, HR drone, or some other person whose job is centered around chatting and networking rather than doing real work. The same people who pay for premium access or would benefit from more people using Linkedin, strangely enough. I think the true importance of LI is far outweighed by its perceived importance among those people.
I used it for a few years long ago, and it never meaningfully contributed to my finding a job, so I cancelled. Still employed, still finding opportunities regularly.
One thing's for sure, Linkedin has always been a scummy and unethical company. So the Microsoft acquisition was a natural pairing.
Itâ(TM)s one of a variety of avenues to get a job. My job prior to my current one happened entirely through LinkedIn.
During the search for my current one I was interviewing from recruiters finding me on LI as well as applications through LI and Indeed. The job I ended up accepting in November was me seeing a posting on LinkedIn and submitting the application directly on their site.
When I was active on linkedin, I would get calls like these daily from people with heavy Indian accents.
>Hello sir, we are looking for someone that knows Windows server. Do you know Windows Server?
>Yes
>Do you know about file sharing?
>Yes
>Do you know about TCP/IP
>Yes
>Are you familiar with Cisco?
>Yes.
>You sound perfect for this client of mine, they are a fortune 500 company. Starting salary is $250,000 USD a year. I just need the last 4 digits of your SSI for a background check.
This is just like the IRS scammer phone calls but with a twist, they're preying on people with no job, no money and desperate for work. As soon as I stopped being active on linkedin, the calls stopped.
I'm on Unemployment as well. I was told the same about linkedin. I still refuse to use it and all social media.
All of my jobs that paid me over $120k/year I got through LinkedIn.
If you want to scrape the bottom of a barrel or looking for a blue collar gig, try Indeed instead.
it works as a place to store your resume and link to it conveniently. it also works as a place to find a specialist in your 2nd circle so you know you can call your contact and ask for real feedback rather than go through all that recommendation bullshit.
the owners however seem to be very much intent to scope-creep it into a facebook of sorts, a place for people to log in every day. IMO that contradicts the whole idea of a job hunting service. compare it to a dating site: if you're on a dating site all the time, it means you're really unhappy with your current relationship, or you can't start one - either way there's something wrong with you, and you should probably be avoided. I login there every once in a while, see all that useless "ace that job interview" or "how to make the best first impression" spam and wonder who even reads these.
LinkedIn is primarily useful for business development, to keep track of contacts or figure out who to talk to at some organization. Hence, if you're a seeking a management, sales, or otherwise business-y role, it's a huge red flag if you haven't developed a substantial presence on LinkedIn.
LinkedIn as a job search platform is probably not going to connect you to an opening, though. I've occasionally tried to run hiring campaigns through LinkedIn, and it's got really low signal-to-noise. You'll have more success using it to actively identify and contact hiring managers at target employers.
As a hiring manager considering an unknown technical candidate, a LinkedIn profile with content and connections is better than a resume because you're making a public statement about your prior accomplishments. I can also quickly validate that you have connections on the right team at your previous workplace. (For an engineer, a Github profile with open-source contributions and interactions is actually the best, because it's a small window into how you're previously worked with a group of people.)
Nothing beats walking into a business and handing a resume' in person.
#anuscake #whillwheaton
A few years ago, I used LinkedIn to locate recruiters at a large tech company. I cold emailed those recruiters, and that led to an interview which led to a job. These days, I am contacted by recruiters at other large tech companies once every few months via LinkedIn.
YMMV, of course. But I continue to find LinkedIn very valuable. I know that when I decide to move on from my current company, LinkedIn will make it much easier to do so.
My userid is prime!
Sound like people blaming others for their inability to find work. I am on LinkedIn, and found it a useful tool when I was looking for a better job... and that's how I ended up with my current employer (2+ years now). I also maintain contact with the many friends I've made over the years through LinkedIn, even an old childhood friend I hadn't seen in 40 years.
LinkedIn is a tool, and isn't to blame if you can't use it properly. IT is most certainly still relevant, since, as the OP states, 95% of recruiters are using it, some better than others. Filter the noise, be active, and it can help you find a job, but none of that matters if you don't do the rest of the work... interview well, have your goals set, be likeable and above all, have good soft skills.
This isn't hard... but apparently we'll continue to see these posts on Slashdot, questioning the relevancy of LinkedIn, every month or so, because coming up with new stories apparently is hard.
Linked-In was definitely more useful in the past, before MS bought them. Did you know that Linked-In has discussion forums? They do, and I found them to be somewhat useful in the past. The first thing Microsoft did was bury the forums something like three or four clicks away from the home page. The first couple of times it took me several minutes to find their forums section, after Microsoft splashed their redesigned UI all over the site. The forums are now a ghost-town.
I used to be able to tag my contacts with labels. I had tags for my cow-orkers and headhunters. For some inexplicable reason Microsoft got rid of the contact labels.
In general, Linked-In obviously tries to suck down your address book and contacts, and grab whatever they can from you. And, they go about it in, pretty much, the expected fashion. Hey, you want to sign up with us? Great! What's your E-mail address? Oh, it's @gmail.com, great! Please enter your Gmail password here: [_______]. Ummm... no.
But you can skip all that, and then proceed and lock down your privacy controls. After that, Linked-In has very little value, but you can't really beat the price. I don't see much harm from giving my basic contact details and technical skills. My Linked-In page is mostly blank. Only years of experience, and my technical background. I don't even list any past employers. I still get occasional link requests from headhunters, gushing about how well I'm qualified for whatever job they're hunting for. I always accept their link request, and send a polite "not right now" note.
It only takes a few moments to do that, but I believe that this will be useful to me at some point. The way I see it, when it is time for me to search for my next job, I'll just flip a few settings, make a pro-forma change to my profile, and Linked-In should then spam all those headhunters on my behalf. I believe there's some value in this: turning the tables on the headhunters. Their obvious intent is always to grab my Linked-In contacts.
The default privacy settings allows your contacts to see all your other contacts. You can turn it off, so only you see all your contacts, and everyone else only sees your total number of contacts. So, the headhunters don't get anything from me, and the next time I'm job hunting it's an easy way to spam a bunch of headhunters.
Job hunting is a game of numbers. 99% of headhunters are a waste of oxygen. But that means that you simply need to spam a hundred of them, to get a good lead. Ok, sounds good to me. That's the only value Linked-In has, to me: making it easy to spam a lot of headhunters, when you need to do that.
Aside from my first (pre-LinkedIn) gig I have found all my jobs via LinkedIn, so I would say that the job postings and recruiter connections are definitely relevant when looking for a job. It took several months to find a new job after I got laid off in 2010, so you may have to manage your expectations, but LinkedIn definitely came through for me.
I do not and would not use it for anything else. I will not connect with people I do not know and who send me cold connect invitations so I actually know what to expect from the people in my network.
But like FB it is a good enough way to keep in touch with contacts. I am not active, I don't post anything, but I can contact people when I need to do so.
Sure you can keep your own list of contacts, but people move change email change phone numbers. Easier just to message someone on the platform.
If you never signed up, they already have a shadow account for you anyway. It is no consequence to keep an account just in case.
What they do to violate privacy happens behind the scenes, and like I said they already have your info even if you don't sign up, so you are not preventing them from doing it by staying away. You would need an act of congress to get some leverage there, and that isn't going to happen.
I will guarantee you that if you apply for job and you do not have a Linkedin account, that is a red flag. They will background check you and wonder why you have no friends and no professional contacts.
As a source of grins and giggles. My spoofed profile is a constant source of enjoyment to those who visit it.
sort of. tighten up your linkedin profile. less is more (sometimes).. make them want to know more about you... marketing 101
Of course you have to be on Linkedin. Linkedin is your resume. Take it from me ... if you are in the business of making, testing or doing whatever with software you HAVE to be there with a detailed, up-to-date profile. Just stay away from that cesspool they call a newsfeed, it can only hurt you.
If you are an influencer in a particular tech carrying multiple job offers then you might not need it. But that's like three of you. Hiring managers sometimes go to GitHub but usually no. Too busy. They'd rather talk directly with you about their needs.
You can step up your visibility in settings, by applying for relevant jobs and by regularly updating your profile (it triggers a push to your connections).
Yes they sell your data and you have zero privacy but you know this is 2019, right? Hell, some of you even wrote that shit.
The rest of it is resume common sense which apparently is not that common. Like don't exaggerate cause tech bombouts are really hard on the ego.
I've been recruiting software people for about 12 years currently for a large company named after a river. For better or for worse we toil within Linkedin from sun up to sun down. If we don't find the right hires we get fired so it's not an affection. In fact I was given a Linkedin license before I was even issued a laptop.
its people outright lying about what their jobs are, or endorsements from your girlfriends mum, its fantasy cv time.
my profile is a joke. the picture is a joke, my current employment is a joke, my endorsements are a joke and that big free text area contains lots of jokes. yet i STILL get invites from randoms to join their networks. personally I call it lumpedin.
we don't use it at work at all. personally I'd never look up somebody's social media account (and yes I shortlist and interview, I'm a manager of 10)
I've been on LinkedIN forever. There's hardly any local employer or recruiter that uses it. However most expats and most locals who worked abroad at some point are there as users.
Software is not supposed to be about how to work around a useability issue. - Ken Barber
so true. i like spam, green eggs and ham, sam i am; Python? check. Ruby on Rails? check. Java? check check.. i digress. ;-)
I am a professional web applications developer and I actually tried the service in the past. Wasn't impressed and can safely say, I had no trouble getting a good job without LinkedIn in my 15-year career so far. And no recruiter ever asked about why I do not have an account there. So I conclude LinkedIn as not relevant at all.
It started as a resume repository. It became a social media site many years ago. I closed my account several years back because of the constant recruiter spam and invitation from strangers. I still get connections requests sent to my business mail (which I have never used on LinkedIn) saying how they found me on LinkedIn. That would be a miracle. The assumption is everybody has a LinkedIn account. I would log on maybe twice a year to check the metamorphosis and it wasn't pretty. It is Microsoft's version of Facebook, another site I don't use. I have never gotten a job from LinkedIn. Only reason I joined in 2007 was somebody wanted a recommendation and I agreed to write one.
See, it's this parochial bullshit that really doesn't track. They have you convinced that only those who are on there have a chance at getting a job, everybody knows everybody else and it's a closed community where the population is small and you just have to be part of it or you'll miss out. Then they get you to bang on about the benefits of the networking and dangle a carrot of "if you do this, others you know can recommend you / you can ask them for employment" as if that is remotely feasible in an international or even same city scenario.
It's bollocks. I've had several jobs in central London over the last 20 years and only once have I encountered or heard about anybody I'd previously worked with and he was someone who'd blagged his way into a job at one place, was sacked for being useless and was trying again at another. A pity I was leading the interviewing team...
"Wait. Something's happening. It's opening up! My God, it's full of apricots!"
I got my current job through a LinkedIn contact, and LinkedIn is the first place recruiters go to look for people with a specific skillset. It's a necessary evil.
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When I'm hiring, it's the 2nd place I look for candidates once I've exhausted my personal network.
That said, the hit rate isn't great. Not hard to find people with the skills I'm looking for, but it is remarkably low odds of people responding. And that's when I make it clear I'm the one actually hiring (not a recruiter).
Order of operations for hiring:
1) personal network
2) LinkedIn search
3) recruiters/headhunters
...why should I care?
Time is what keeps everything from happening all at once.
I haven't been looking for a job for years, but I still occasionally get offers through LinkedIn.
So while I don't think that LinkedIn is strictly necessary, it's also not pointless, so I think that it's worth being on it.
Filter the noise,...
It's all noise. In all the years I was there, I never received a legitimate inquiry. LinkedIn is like every other social media.
I find tons of premium pussy on Linked-in! It is almost as good as Adult Friend Finder!
Unimaginative amateurs with anonymous coward as LinkedIn has been very helpful to get work and add credibility in numerous instances.
http://www.aisnota.com/slashdot/ Welcome to Logic and the Future
It seems to me for higher up the ladder jobs, connecting via a social network may be useful. 95% of recruiters? Keep dreaming Microsoft, 95% of the recruiters on LinkedIn are either con jobs or massive spam campaigns by some India-based consultant recruiting company.
What helps:
- Having an up-to-date LinkedIn if you want to connect to your recruiter. Recruiters don't go out and research your LinkedIn, not enough time for that. but there's nothing worse than getting an invite from a candidate and your resume doesn't match your profile
- Treat LinkedIn like your workfloor, if you like to post inflammatory comments on our feeds we'll assume that's how you treat coworkers
- Not stalking your recruiter, wait at least until you pass the first interview
- Having an up to date resume plain and simple relevant to the job you're applying for.
- Send a brief but to-the-point cover letter
- Your first phone interview is the most important, not just a formality to a sit-down; we discard ~75% of applicants at resume but ~90% after phone calls. By the time you sit down, we only have a handful of candidates. Treat it as such, if I say 11am, don't sound like you just woke up, don't have a bowl of soup, don't type on your computer to find an answer, if it helps wear a suit and tie and get an empty quiet room at your local library.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
I got my last 3 jobs there from recruiters reaching out to me and I still get messages from recruiters almost daily.
However it doesn’t seem as useful as it could be.
I think it’s probably more useful for younger people and those who are willing to relocate for a job.
#DeleteChrome
In the space of five months I fucked six women: two within 30 minutes of each other. Hell I fucked one within an hour of meeting her for the first time.
Got my last 3 years via Linkedin and still get recruiters message almost daily.
More so than /.
This makes no sense, was this a phone call? If yes, what would linked in have to do with it, I mean, surely, you are not supposed to put your phone number up on Linked-in, why would you?
When I switched my Linked in profile to job seeker I got contacted by a few recruiters, several of which were actually relevant and I found my new job in about a week. I'd say it is quite relevant in my field (software engineer), as companies prefer to use recruiters and recruiters prefer to use linked in.
I don't do anything else with linked in, it is just like an online resume repository which recruiters use.
Violence is the last refuge of the incompetent. Polar Scope Align for iOS
... that phrase was told to me of LinkedIn over a decade ago. I've got a lot of connections on LinkedIn, but I log in to LinkedIn maybe once or twice a year. Why bother? There is little of use on LinkedIn anymore.
On your physical job market, who your connections are in LinkedIN...and, I think more importantly, what you actually DO with the page. I found that getting a few actual "Reccomendations" or whatever they are called from real people helps quite a bit. Plus, I put up a few pages on it linking back to specific projects I was working on. I also have a website (running mediawiki) that I post how-to instructionals on for various projects, server installs, command line references, etc. It's info I use all the time, some are step-by-step install instructions, some of it is just useful command-line switches, or links to other sites. But when I was job hunting, being able to point to that site and say "I wrote all of this myself, from real-world deployments" was incredibly useful. Plus it's really useful to reference for myself; like I'll copy n paste sets of Cisco commands up to it so I can easily reference them later, or note some more esoteric procedures that show I can handle odd tasks stripping out AppX bloatware from Windows 10.
I keep my LinkedIN trimmed too; when I move to a new company I add new people as I meet them and I remove many people when I leave. But, I always keep the recruiters I work with up there. These are local recruiters I know in real life, people I have worked with and actually trust to find me (or other people I know who are looking) work...I have found working with non-local recruiters to be a non-viable path. Sometimes when I get a call from a non-local I will call my locals who I know might have a contact and ask them instead. I'm not trying to "get them more business", but I've found the local people actually follow-up, are more reachable, and will try harder since I'm a "real person" to them as opposed to a file.
for finding old friends from old jobs in different states. There are lots of company specific location groups. Over my career, I've moved states 11 times and lost track of work contacts who might be helpful finding my next role and who I might be able to help. Helping old friends with a great reference is a pleasure.
Then MSFT bought them - why? Never understood that. Didn't matter, I deleted my account.
... but I'm looking forward to the day when I can dump it.
Why? Well... years ago, LI was known informally as "Facebook with a Tie". That wasn't really true as far as I could tell at the time when I first joined. There were some really useful aspects to LI that I wasn't finding anywhere else. Remember LI's exclusive job postings? I do but those are long gone now. Nowadays the job matching that LI does isn't any better than the crummy results that the large job sites--Indeed, Glassdoor, Careerbuilder, etc--provide. The rise of LIONS--which were, I thought, actually discouraged by LI--makes me cringe every time I get a request to be a connection from someone I've never worked with, ever heard of, and, certainly, never met. It harkens back to the days when people collected tons of business cards and thought that meant they were well connected.
As for the old "Facebook with a Tie" description of old... Since the Microsoft acquisition, I find that LI is becoming more and more like Facebook and less and less of a business/employee networking site. My "news" feed default defaults to the "Top" (i.e., most popular/trending) articles as opposed to "Recent". And "Recent" cannot be made to be your default setting so emphasizing popularity is the goal on LI now. Pity. Then there are the idiotic items that make it into my news feed that are allegedly "trending" in my city as though many people in my area care one whit, for example, about a new vice president of an obscure Hong Kong corporation. Add in all the come-ons for MBA programs, articles that seem to be appearing in the feed because of one word that is in my profile, self-pats on the back by people who managed to pass an exam who I don't know from Adam, and you have a recipe for a complete waste of my time.
That said, I do try top keep a browser window opened to LI in case a recruiter finds something interesting to discuss with me. I do wish, though, that recruiters would get it through their heads that most LI users (I suspect) are probably spending much, much more time monitoring other web sites and that instant messaging someone within LI may not get the quick response they're looking for. If they'd only dig down a tiny bit they'd find my email address and they could reach me much more quickly. Email instead IM? Yep. Recent experience has shown that attaching docs within LI's IM application doesn't always work so you have to use email anyway.
Last but far from least: The whole joke about "N people looked at your profile" that LI likes to tell you about. I can count on one hand the number of LI users whose identities were made known to me in the last year or so. So they really ought to cut out the silly requests that I become a Premium member to see who these mystery profile viewers were. It doesn't help because of LI's practice of allowing some members pay a little more to remain anonymous to even Premium members. All the Premium membership accomplishes is transferring more of my money to LI.
CUR ALLOC 20195.....5804M
I actually met my girlfriend through LinkedIn. I pretended to have a movie audition and put the job requirements as the kind of girlfriend I'd like - tall, fit, artistic, warm, etc. Now I am dating a tall ex-ballerina. I figure, what could possibly go wrong?
Yeah, I guess I "opted out" of that social media aspect. I never understood people posting streams of stuff on LinkedIn—the negatives (you might unknowingly piss off someone who was considering you for a position) far outweigh the positives (someone looking for a candidate notices you), and unlike other social media, the impact on your job prospect is direct and purposefully so.
LinkedIn is useful for what it started out as. Do you want a public copy of your resume out there where people can see it, but you don't want to bother with maintaining a personal website (not to mention most personal websites don't get much traffic anyway)? Then LinkedIn is very useful for that. Are you expecting LinkedIn to just deliver best jobs to you? In that case the blame lies with unreasonable expectations, not what LinkedIn can or can't do.
Yes. I got my last three jobs via LinkedIn.
At my current job, doing security, I make it a point to tell people I actively do NOT use Facebook, I don't ever go there while at work, and rarely use it at home. If anyone really keeps bringing it up, I sometimes even will show them specific TLP:WHITE bulletins from US CERT that involve Facebook; then they start to understand.
I've found it most useful to connect to old coworkers or friends. Mots of the random connect requests I get are from people wanting to sell something. The open groups are pretty useless, as with the rest of the internet usually one or too people arguing with everyone and posting long TL;DR screeds. The few job openings I was contacted for quickly went away when I told them my going rate; they wanted years of experience at newbie prices. I've learned to start conversations with "To avoid wasting both our times my rate is... Does that work for you?"
Mostly it's a way for MS to try to sell more crap - such as "X viewed your profile. Pay to unlock all the names" or "See how you compare with xxx for this position for only YY$."
I'm a consultant - I convert gibberish into cash-flow.
It's only relevant to people who have the wherewithal not to ask stupid questions to a website populated with morons like slashdot.
Need a place to repost an article that makes you look smart?
That's what linkedin is for.
My job is mostly technical (animal nutrition, not IT), and I use it as a form of technical marketing. I post when Iâ(TM)ll be talking at a conference, articles that I want my customers to read, and links to videos Iâ(TM)ve made that describe aspects of how to use my products.
Iâ(TM)m connected on LinkedIn with customers, colleagues, and supervisors. Posting there has raised my visibility with upper management, which has helped me advocate for promotions and raises internally. It has also increased my visibility to recruiters. Innactive (cause Iâ(TM)m busy with real work) and I get a contact about a position quarterly. When Iâ(TM)m active I can get them monthly to almost weekly. Now, most positions I pass on on the first contact, but I have gotten several interesting opportunities brought to my attention via linked in that Iâ(TM)m not sure I would have gotten otherwise.
Notice that Iâ(TM)m active in my current role. Iâ(TM)m not sure how much benefit there is to being on there if you are unemployed and have not built a presence before now. I suspect that recruiters look at your past activity (and with greater detail that even you can get on your own activity) as part of their evaluation so a brand new account may not be worth much in the short term. It also may be that your industry doesnâ(TM)t use it as much as the recruiters in mine appear to. Good luck.
Bureaucracy expands to meet the needs of the expanding bureaucracy.-Oscar Wilde
I was offered my last 3 big consulting jobs (big being more than 1 year's full-time income) from LinkedIn, as well as sources for funding a startup I'm working on. It's a great place to make contacts, find funding, find jobs - if you use it as such. Build out your profile, include all your skills and achievements, and you'll get quite a bit of traction.
Browsing at +1 - no ACs, I ignore their posts. So refreshing!
I mean, employers just throw out most resumes they get for an opening.
They throw out most resumes because they are poorly written or from people that aren't even remotely qualified for the position.
We auto-reject, without feedback, any resume that has spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, or doesn't contain the word "Java" when someone is applying to be a Java programmer. That cleans out 60-70% of them, leaving far fewer for a human to read.
I still get connections requests sent to my business mail (which I have never used on LinkedIn) saying how they found me on LinkedIn. That would be a miracle.
I've gotten emails to "firstname.lastname @ companyname.com" the same way except I don't use that email address format. I just so happen to have it set up as an alias though but it's never been used anywhere. So unless Google is selling email addresses (we use Google Apps for Business) what they did was found a co-worker's email address and guessed what mine was. Some employees do use that format but not all.
It's still relevant, but less so. Not sure if Microsoft ownership has anything to do with it, but it feels like spam-infected abandoned website left to be (over)run by anyone for last year or maybe a bit longer.
I mean, employers just throw out most resumes they get for an opening.
They throw out most resumes because they are poorly written or from people that aren't even remotely qualified for the position.
We auto-reject, without feedback, any resume that has spelling errors, grammatical mistakes, or doesn't contain the word "Java" when someone is applying to be a Java programmer. That cleans out 60-70% of them, leaving far fewer for a human to read.
Barristas at Starbucks are Java developers!
1. LinkedIn is my rolodex in the cloud, except that the users update their own rolodex cards so I don't have to do it. 2. LinkedIn is occasionally useful for business intelligence; when batch of people from the same company are updating their info, I know a layoff is happening. 3. LinkedIn is perhaps somewhat useful for marketing myself, since I'm self-employed through my own company. 4. LinkedIn can be useful for meeting potential new clients and colleagues; I've at least encountered some professionally-interesting people there. 4. LinkedIn is entertaining from time to time.
I get pinged by recruiters constantly if I turn on the "I'm looking of a job" thing. Having an in-demand skillset may affect your mileage.
The reason the active users isn't very high is most people only use it when they're looking for a new job.
Question everything
Yes
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
My last two jobs, Amazon and Microsoft, came by way of LinkedIn. MS had not yet bought it when they hired me. And I had recruiters pinging me constantly through LinkedIn.
So, I'm tempted to think that those folks that aren't having success with it haven't done a good job of filling out their profile. My LinkedIn profile is pretty much my resume at this point.
LinkedIn does not really want you, they want your contacts in order to get to the person the recruiters are trying to find. That's hardly ever you. You are a dime a dozen. They are just leveraging you for data. Sound familiar? Hence there will be no lack of shills saying how great it is.
LinkedIn just serves as a way to distribute email addresses to spammers.
Unfortunately, the last time I tried to apply for a job with linkedin, it didn't fill in any of the fields. I contacted the HR department directly and asked them if I could just send them my resume for consideration, and they told me that they were only accepting applications through whatever busted-ass site they were using, so I figured they're going to be pains in the ass all day every day, but that doesn't change how worthless linkedin is shaping up to be.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
I'm a hiring manager and I throw out most resumes I get for a position, probably >90%. But I do read them all, even if it takes one minute to read most resumes. Every single one thrown is because the person has no real interest or motivation in getting the job.
Number one thing by a country mile folks - include a cover letter. Just two paragraphs that you've written specifically to me, on why you're interested in the job and perhaps how you experience applies, and you're almost guaranteed a deep look or an interview. For cripes sake, most people don't think at all and the form-letter style "objective" sections I see all the time make it apparent they're spamming the exact same document to whatever they can find.
The interview for my current job, which I landed last year, only came about because a recruiter saw me on LinkedIn. More importantly, the last three outfits that employed me checked my LinkedIn page before making an offer. Yes, I say it's still relevant.
The day Microsoft announced buying them, a whole lot of people deleted their accounts, given the company's reputation/practice of having telemetry that couldn't be fully disabled in their operating systems.
For the most part, you only need one job. There's no reason anymore to have your entire work history be posted online.
It's not optimal but then what is?
We hire only through employee references. LinkedIn helps check on some of those connctions .
Ads didn't work for mid level. Kind of worked for senior and junior engineers, go figure. I suspect that's more to do with mortgages or lack there of.
While there may be some value in reading job listings on LinkedIn, or passively waiting for a recruiter to solicit you, the real value of LInkedIn is the network you build. Once you find a company you want to work for, or a specific job listing you want to investigate, you should explore your network to see if you can find someone who will put you directly in touch with the hiring manager (and better yet, give you a direct endorsement). You can circle back to HR when you need to, but getting a chance to pitch or talk to the hiring manager directly -- of make contacts within a company who can lead you to jobs that aren't even listed yet -- is the most valuable use of LinkedIn.
I would agree that it is somewhat useful. However, I find that the feed I get is chock full of:
"we thought you'd find this interesting" crap that's irrelevant to my interests or listed career/skills
political SJW commentary
boring memes that have been circulating on LI for years
link requests from recruiters asking me about jobs that have absolutely nothing to do with my background
link requests from random members of the opposite sex with glamour shot photos and no discernible skills listed
etc
So I rarely use it anymore. I suppose if I didn't have a job and was REALLY anxious about finding one, I'd pay more attention to it. But for now, it's basically a place for me to keep an infrequently curated resume online.
Personally, I am much more a sucker for a good cover letter than an artificial LinkedIn profile.
back in 2003, logged in and started looking at things. The steps to get your account setup and the information they wanted caught me off guard.I did not see any reason to provide that kind of information about me and my business. ;) ;)
;).
Logged off to think it over and just never went back. Did log back in to my account today. Still there just like I left it. Except there were a bunch of new features about sharing, etc I decided to turn off.
I did notice the links to sign up for LinkedIn premium, at a premium of course
lol A member for 16 years
Just my 2 cents
To give all your work history and work contact info to one centralized repository who can data mine everything about a society in a privileged way just seems like a huge social risk for our society -- the major reason I never joined it.
A 21st century issue: the irony of technologies of abundance in the hands of those still thinking in terms of scarcity.
No one seemed to mention this, I had linkedin premium when looking for work, then I got my correct position. I have a stable position so I dropped premium to go free and then decided the risk of putting so much personal info on there was risky.
But my HR department bugs us to be on there. So I simply stripped it down to the bare minimum: no photo, no work history other than my current company name and start date.
It's enough to keep my in the HR good graces, and if one of my co-workers does a contact request I can link to them so I don't get hassled.
Marketers and head hunters can send you spam.
At best, important people's executive assistants are on linkedin managing the important person's account. The rest are sales/marketing/middle management and others not really sure why they are there.
If the person is a "C" level executive then they are C level for a company of under 100 people with under 25 mil in sales.
As a high end architect at a large company, I can confirm that your advice cuts both ways. I constantly get told about "great" 6 month contract-to-hire opportunities in podunk NJ despite the fact that I clearly state I'm a FTE with benefits who is happy in FL and that I despise snow.
I tend to avoid companies that use hashtags like "#honeytrapfriendly".
I've never had a LinkedIn account and I've been gainfully employed at three tech companies over the last 8 years. For me it was never relevant.
LinkedIn became popular only after I had decided to quit Facebook and I was damn certain I didn't want to join another Facebook clone, even one masquerading as "career networking."
Props if you've managed to use LinkedIn to your advantage. I don't need it.
No surprise. Aunt Betty opens a linkedin account and she is asked if she wants to connect with the people in her address book.
As you and aunt Betty have exchanged holiday greetings, she can now give your email address to linkedin in method the company uses to gain membership.
Linkedin then send you the email asking if you want to join and connect with your aunt.
I talked to a Microsoft guy once at a party that extolled the virtues of the honesty on LinkedIn. It was basically his arbiter of truth for whatever his job actually was. Fast forward to 2018 and the last company I worked for had this absolute do-nothing employee. His LinkedIn profile wasn't your ordinarily exaggerated resume, it was a fraudshop. He had "vendors" recommending him for things that he not only never did, but didn't have the conceptual werewithal to have known where to start.
He moved up from a Director to a VP, so apparently lies do pay.
If that one person is *only* applying for jobs through LinkedIn, they're an idiot. When you're job hunting, you use every channel you can find, or you're not serious. There are plenty of other channels out there, and you need to use them all.
That said, I have a son looking for an IT job. I had him create profiles on LinkedIn and on Xing. Now, we're in Europe, so things may be different, but: he's had activity from Xing, but absolutely nothing at all from LinkedIn.
I've personally found LinkedIn useful a couple of times as a way to contact someone, when you otherwise have no contact information.
Enjoy life! This is not a dress rehearsal.
Interesting comment, but I can't really decide if it deserved insightful or informative moderation... So I'll focus on the part that most interested me, which was right at the end, the bit about Premium membership. The "premium" search was the only one that came close to my interests.
You [rnturn] complain that "All the Premium membership accomplishes is transferring more of my money to LI." My first question is what is "more" referring to?
However the deeper topic is how the premium memberships relate to the overall economic model of LinkedIn. If LI is deriving a large portion of their revenue from premium subscriptions, then it will have large effects on how they run their business and who they are "loyal" to. In the conventional employer-paid job-matching service, the loyalty is obviously going to be to the employers. That's a really simple business model to understand: The employer pays to get the cheapest employees who can do the work. There might be a few lottery winners who get great jobs, but the bread and butter is going to be a race to the bottom, pitting all the applicants against each other for the available jobs. Most importantly, the incentive system encourages LinkedIn to report the lowest salaries possible to make sure applicants aren't even hoping for too much money.
What I'd be interested in would be a job-search website where the economic model is split between the employees and employers on a win-win basis. Fat chance, right?
In theory, LI could find uniquely best matching jobs for each unique person. I've never seen any evidence that it ever happens. There are a few stellar people, but they do NOT need LinkedIn's help to get stellar jobs. Such people are already known by their visible track records.
Okay, now I have more keywords to search for, but I'm doubtful I should spend the time searching on Slashdot...
Freedom = (Meaningful - Coerced) Choice != (Speech | Beer^2), and sad sock puppets' bad mods avail them naught.
I'm willing to bet that in the vast majority of cases, people create a linkedIn account because there's an expectation you need to have an account.
You'll upload your resume and likely only ever visit again when you are changing jobs or when someone in your network starts a new job. I guess it's also useful if you get a job offer and you want more insight into those who will be interviewing you.
Perhaps it also depends on the work sector you are in?
I'm lucky enough to be in a sector, software development, on the right side of the supply/demand - an employee. Every job I've landed over the last 10 years has been through word of mouth.
If the work dries up, then I'm sure I'd make far more use of linkedIn as one of the tools at my disposal, but right now, it's about as useful as a recruitment agency = not very.
I'm sure it would also be super useful if I was relocating outside of my immediate network.
Ten years ago, LinkedIn was useful for maintaining your business network. Today, it has become just another Facebook clone.
no, I don't have a sig
LinkedIn has a very active, collaborative, and helpful community. But if you think to post a resume with a crappy profile picture and then receive job offers, you will be disappointed. Donâ(TM)t write a resume and a bunch of projects that you worked on to try to impress prospect employers. Itâ(TM)s unlikely that you will make that impression. Tell me how hiring you will help my company achieve its goals. Tell me how good you are at communication. Because companies need teams of people and you donâ(TM)t form a team with a bunch of people who cannot communicate. Create a well designed profile. There are LinkedIn experts that will teach you what is important and effective. Their classes donâ(TM)t cost much and they are well worth the time. Create a killer profile, and then write, at least once a week, an article or post to help people. If you are an expert in blockchain then explain how the technology can help in several fields. If you are a compiler expert, write about the challenges of writing certain types of applications and how to solve those issues. If you are a web developer, write about the idiosyncrasies of each mobile browser. Write in a way that explains those topics to everybody. Donâ(TM)t try to impress fellow techies. They are not the ones hiring you. And stop treating everything as a competition about who is smarter. The first thing that people see in your profile is your picture. Do you want to stand out? Donâ(TM)t post a crappy selfie. Donâ(TM)t try to be creative with funny âoefiltersâ or video game avatars. Hire a personal branding photographer and get a few professional portraits. Use one for your profile picture and then use the others in rotation in every post that you write. You will be immediately visibile and different from the crowd. When I applied to a job in Borland, years ago, I was the top contender, technically, in the group. And yet I was not immediately hired because the manager wanted to make sure that my personality was a good match for the team. I had to prove that in person and I did that by paying my own flight and hotel from Italy to California. That made an impression. And then I spent time talking with every member of the database development team. That made an impression. And then Borland hired me. Personality is a key element in hiring decisions. Do all of the things suggested above and you will stand out and the recruiters will contact you. In that regard, LinkedIn is the perfect platform for you.
I use LinkedIn a lot. It's a place to park all my professional contacts (people who i wouldn't add on FB or Twitter, but whom i find useful to keep tabs on) and followup to see where they're at, and get ideas for where to apply. I've landed 1 job specifically through a LinkedIn post, and helped people network with each other through the site.
any my experience has been this:
Linkdn is great for filling skilled positions.
However its utterly useless for finding entry-level people. By-and-large the entry-level people ive interviewed from linkdn were completely unhirable.
The good entry-level people are all on CL or indeed.
Who knew hiring managers needed to be babysat. I doubt you'd make a good manager for me or most IT people.
And Linkedin asks, Is Slashdot still relevant?
Easily the best way to find tech jobs these days (in rural areas especially.) Also good for keeping in touch with old coworkers and acquaintances.
The discussion groups that once tried to become Usenet II have decayed into spam swamps.
"LinkedIn had 590 million members -- though back in 2016 Microsoft conceded that less than 25% of the service's members were active. Yet CNBC recently shared estimates that 95% of recruiters are using LinkedIn to find candidates"
"active" is measured by logging in once a month (or some frequency along those lines). Just because someone doesn't log in every month doesn't mean they aren't using the site. Folks with stable jobs have up-to-date profiles yet don't have to log in often, unless they're looking to change jobs.
As with many things, those who didn't yet have any success through/using LinkedIn, will tell it's not relevant, not useful, waste of time, and those who had success in landing interviews, finding jobs, will say it's relevant.
It's no different than any other site which can - in theory - connect you to jobs. If we'd start an is-jobsite-X-relevant for each of them, man, can't really figure a larger waste of time and space.
I am putting myself to the fullest possible use, which is all I can think that any conscious entity can ever hope to do.
"any resume that has spelling errors"
What can I do about *job reqs* that have spelling errors? I have seen a significant number of job titles that include "principle engineer".
I have found that the related jobs shown on the side of a given job posting to pretty good examples of jobs actually in the same or adjacent fields as opposed to just more keyword search results.
This is helpful you're in a field that can be described three ways and each of those ways can also be used for a completely different job, and also when job titles have been fetishized by everyone is just "Senior Member of Technical Staff".
The relevance of LinkedIn should be looked at from the employer's point of view. If employers search LinkedIn for candidates, and interview some, then the service is useful and job searchers should post resumes. For every LinkedIn filled job opening there will always be many more candidates that are passed over for interviews and job offers than get the job and that will make LinkedIn seem unnecessary for any specific candidate who was not interviewed based on a LinkedIn search or who gets a job through another method.
I left LinkedIn as soon as Microsoft bought it. I'm an extremist in that I don't have Facebook either, just Twitter (which I may dump this year). However I never had a job from it and have always had plenty of offers elsewhere.
So, I'm wondering about all the 'I got a fantastic job from LinkedIn' posts. Most people around me have had the same experience as myself, not a significant sample, I admit.
On y va, qui mal y pense!
Every single job I have been offered over the last decade has come from LinkedIn so yea, for me itâ(TM)s very relevant. In fact I get so many offers each week that I had to flag my account as âNot seeking new employmentâ(TM). Even still there are stubborn recruiters who still reach out to try to convince me to leave my employer to work for them.
principle engineers are also known as "ethical engineers"
what do you think principles engineer themselves?
Lots of clients find me on LinkedIn.
The problems with LinkedIn are twofold:
1) They want to be more than they are, adding Facebook type stuff that nobody needs,
2) They want to know more than they need, adding dark patterns to scam you out of more contact info that you're willing to share.
Just enter your CV, connect to co-workers, employers and recruiters, and ignore all the other crap.
Does your company's ATS allow that? Not all of them do. No way to do anything but upload a resume, get an autoreply that it has been received, and that's it.
Yes, I think everyone does. That is just some recruiter using LinkedIn and creating activity so that they can either 1.) make their numbers, stats, KPIs etc., and/or 2.) to ensure that there is enough activity to justify keeping the recruiter accounts (which are not free). I always respond back politely, because you just never know.
Stopped linked in after spam recruiter calls for non-existant jobs and cold sales calls for home repairs, etc based on my apparent income and geographic location guessed by linked in listed job experience.
Parents told me: "Don't advertise how much you make or what you own" long ago.
That is like asking if a note pad is not relevant. It's a tool that you can use how you want. Perhaps you are using it wrong, so it has no value to you anymore. I don't do social media, no Facebook account or that stuff. I do use Linkedin to keep track of people who I have worked with. I don't add "friends" or recruiters, or message people or anything else. I just make a list of the people who I know. I was told that networking was important, but I don't find that easy. And trying to remember all the people that I have known in the past using contacts, a text file, Excel, etc. would be harder and less accurate. It works for keeping track of people you know, that's it, that's what it is good at.
-- ssoorrrryy,, dduupplleexx sswwiittcchh oonn.. -Quote found on actual fortune cookie.
i think linkedin is a very useful tool. I managed to find a lot of job offers there - and actually get hired via it several times -, and there are even some interesting stories here and there from groups that i follow.
Much like any other social network, linedin is only as useful as you make it be.
"life is a joke, and someone is laughing at me"
Or "00 engineering". Sorry, I don't install, repair or clean toilets.