Ask Slashdot: Is LinkedIn Still Relevant? 201
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? (Score:3, Insightful)
Betteridge's law definitely applies here.
Re:Betteridge's law? (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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My last job was gotten via LinkedIn. I think it's a great way to get professional exposure.
Re: Betteridge's law? (Score:1)
LinkedIn is useful for making contacts of a purely professional nature. I can "connect" with all my coworkers and business world contacts without polluting other social media like Facebook, which is more personal. Then I can use LinkedIn to contact people when job hunting, or just to make contacts in a company or industry.
The built in search tools for jobs are less useful, although I do find it marginally helpful if I want to get on the radar with various headhunters.
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Except I'd argue it is.
If you have to "argue" that it is then it's not obvious that it is, n'est pas?
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Which is usually the same answer I give my manager when he asks if a particular issue is something the offshore team can work on.
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Betteridge's law definitely applies here.
No, it doesn't. This is an actual, legitimate question.
Betteridge's Law has been around for *years*. You'd think that by now people around here would understand why (and where) it applies instead of kneejerk-yelling "Betteridge" at every headline with a question mark. And yet, I can still reply to stuff like this with a comment I made six years ago [slashdot.org]:-
As I correctly predicted earlier this year [slashdot.org], lots of Slashdotters have seized upon Betteridge as the latest fad kneejerk response, and are misapplying it without understanding what it means. In his own words, [wikipedia.org] Betteridge's Law applies to cases where journalists "know the story is probably bullshit, and don’t actually have the sources and facts to back it up, but still want to run it."
For example, without the evidence to back it up, a headline saying "Tomato ketchup caused AIDS that led to exitinction of dinosaurs" would be obvious crap and lead to criticism of the paper and/or journalist. OTOH, "Did Tomato ketchup cause AIDS that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs?" gives them the weasellish get-out of "Well, we didn't actually *claim* that it did".
Even then, if a question headline was a genuine attempt to present a plausibly-supported but not universally-accepted idea (possibly because it was new and/or divisive), then Betteridge's wouldn't apply.
In short, Betteridge's original observation was insightful where he claimed it applied, but it was never a blanket dismissal of question headlines, so please stop the tedious, kneejerk misapplication.
Not really (Score:1)
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.
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They serve totally different purposes. Linkedin is a roledex. Its a list of all your contacts and connections, so you can prove your experience, and so you can contact your network in the future. Github is a source code repository. It can work as a bit of a portfolio, but only if you work on open source projects (remember most devs don't).
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It's also a way past the "one page limit" for resumes. If your career is decades long, with many fields and projects, it's a chance to list all the vital skills that might relate to the work applied for. I've recently interviewed an engineer whom HR had passed over due to lack of Windows Active Directory experience, when they had _considerable_ experience with running a full Samba based domain controller on a storage appliance, much to the fiscal benefit and system stability of their former employer. I was
I don't know. Is having a resume still relevant? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.).
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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
Re:I don't know. Is having a resume still relevant (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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.
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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.
Re:I don't know. Is having a resume still relevant (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
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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!
Re:I don't know. Is having a resume still relevant (Score:5, Funny)
"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".
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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.
Re:I don't know. Is having a resume still relevant (Score:5, Interesting)
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.
Re: I don't know. Is having a resume still relevan (Score:5, Insightful)
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So what you're saying is that Linkedin is good for finding those employed in the oldest profession?
Still Relevant (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
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"And if you aren't on there, it does raise the question of why you aren't. And that, ... raises a bit of a red flag."
By red flag do you mean annoyance that you might need to actually interact with someone by phone or email instead of just reading their vanity page?
We aren't on there because we are confident in our ability to get a good job, so we don't need to desperately and pointlessly put all of our personal information on a crappy social network to be abused by every irrelevant head-hunter and recruiter
Re: Still Relevant (Score:2)
For anyone in a sensitive kind of work it might be a bit of a problem to be exposed on any social media.
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I guess that depends on if Microsoft is a competitor. My employer has asked all employees to delete our LinkedIn profiles after abuse by Microsoft.
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I joined LinkedIn circa 2006... (Score:5, Insightful)
... 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.
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Are you sure a friend really told you that? Linkedin's MO around that time was to get access to your mail program ostensibly so it could read your contact list and figure out who you knew. What it really did was send out a spam email in your name to your entire contact list, telling everyone what a great service it was and that they should sign up too.
They're
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I closed my account when I saw that I was getting endorsements for skills or experience:
1. that I didn't have
2. from people who couldn't possibly know one way or the other
So, either linkedin was auto-generating those endorsements, or linkedin was phishing people on my contact list* with "hey, click this button to endorse dwywit with skills in SQLServer?", or people I barely knew were playing games.
* only the list of contacts within linkedin itself. I *never* gave it access to my outlook contacts, despite re
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They definitely asked for access to webmail credentials.
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I've never bothered with LinkedIn and never had trouble getting a job.
When I want a change I usually use Monster and JobSite. I tried Stack Overflow but it's crap. Seems aimed at junior grade JavaScript stuff.
These days I have a list of recruiters who I know are not asshats that I can email too.
Something relevant can still be harmful. (Score:1)
The sad state of affairs is there's nothing working any better, either.
the irony (Score:2)
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
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Yes, if used properly... (Score:4, Insightful)
You need a professional presence, they provide a repository. Curate that carefully (but with as little personal information as possible), ignore the rest.
Yes? (Score:3)
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.
Linkedin is a scammers haven (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
This makes no sense (Score:3)
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
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it's fine I guess (Score:3)
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.
(mostly) necessary but not sufficient (Score:2, Interesting)
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 suc
Yes... at least if you're in the tech industry (Score:3)
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.
Anon slashdot readers unemployable, blame LinkedIn (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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The Microsoft Touch (Score:4, Informative)
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.
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Depends on what you use it for (Score:1)
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 e
Of course it is (Score:2)
This is a Question? (Score:1)
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 rath
Linkedin has never been relevant outside USA (Score:2)
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.
Yes, it's relevant (Score:4, Insightful)
It's the 2nd place I look for candidates (Score:3)
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
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What is LinkedIn, and... (Score:2)
...why should I care?
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20+ years of internet use has taught me not to "plug" random phrases into search engines.
I get offers through LinkedIn (Score:3)
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.
Only amateurs ignore LinkedIn (Score:2)
Unimaginative amateurs with anonymous coward as LinkedIn has been very helpful to get work and add credibility in numerous instances.
Yes and no (Score:2)
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
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I actually have three different resumes. One is a single page, with a
I wouldn’t say it’s not relevant... (Score:2)
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.
Well ... (Score:1)
LinkedIn is where connections go to die... (Score:2)
It all depends... (Score:2)
I still have a profile on LI... (Score:3)
... 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.
What is the economic model of LinkedIn? (Score:2)
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
MS trying to monetize it (Score:2)
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 tim
Depends on how you use it (Score:2)
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 in
Very relevant for me at least... (Score:2)
Relevant, but not so much as before (Score:1)
LinkedIn is your rolodex in the cloud (Score:1)
Yes (Score:2)
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.
Yes (Score:2)
Yes
Yes (Score:2)
I've hired people through LinkedIn (Score:1)
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.
A good cover letter goes farther (Score:2)
Personally, I am much more a sucker for a good cover letter than an artificial LinkedIn profile.
I created a linkedIn account (Score:2)
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 co
LinkedIn is immoral (Score:2)
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.
They exist so.. (Score:2)
Marketers and head hunters can send you spam.
If they're important, they're not on linkedin. (Score:2)
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.
Never had a LinkedIn account... (Score:2)
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.
It's a tool... (Score:2)
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 coup
What's the primary use case? (Score:1)
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
LI was relevant, 10 years ago (Score:2)
Ten years ago, LinkedIn was useful for maintaining your business network. Today, it has become just another Facebook clone.
It gives you what you put in (Score:1)
Linkedin (Score:1)
And Linkedin asks, Is Slashdot still relevant?
Yes (Score:1)
Yes/No (Score:2)
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.
Useful feature: related jobs (Score:2)
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".
I wonder how much of this is Microsoft astroturf? (Score:2)
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.
LinkedIn is very useful but still crap (Score:2)
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.
It's a tool like any other (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re:It's dead Jim. (Score:5, Insightful)
And that's what Linkedin is- its a list of all your contacts, except you don't have to work to keep in contact with them- they update their own info as it changes. And its separate from your personal network.
Nobody actually cares about the social networking portion. Its just a place to hold your resume and keep a list of your connections.
Re: (Score:1)
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 inter
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Outside the fast food or retail industries, the vast majority of employers refuse to accept resumes in that way. They always insist that all resumes must be submitted through whichever broken web form they have on their site.