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?
Except I'd argue it is.
Last year I was in the midst of a job search, and putting up the "I'm actively looking for a job" flag on LinkedIn was plenty useful.
Granted in some ways it's like being a single girl on a dating site where you get inundated with interested parties, forcing you to wade through them and find the good ones.
I'm actually in my current job because of it, making it the first time I got a job not due to me reaching out first, but because of a company or it's agents doing so.
Help Brendan pay off his student loans
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.)
My last job was gotten via LinkedIn. I think it's a great way to get professional exposure.
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.
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'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.