
Hacking a job search with fifty dollars of free LinkedIn credit - realYitzi
https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/hacking-job-search-linkedin-how-i-spent-my-morning-when-ginzberg/
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fecak
I write resumes for a living and coach many of my clients on job search
strategy, which often relates to strategies to get people to actually read the
resume that I've written for them.

I've never heard of someone doing this, and it's not a bad hack since it's
apparently free. My main question would be the effectiveness of an ad like
this vs a simple message to the people directly.

As a recruiter (which I was in a different life), would I even notice an ad
like this? I'm not sure, but I'd definitely notice a message in my inbox
saying "Hey Dave, I found your profile doing some research on $COMPANY ..."

Since he's only targeting 15 companies doing a quick search on LinkedIn for
HR/recruiting types at those firms and sending a message like that could
probably be done in under an hour, and I'd think it might be a bit more
effective than the ad.

It's a clever idea, but I'd question how effective it might be vs a direct
message.

~~~
jcomis
> _Since he 's only targeting 15 companies doing a quick search on LinkedIn
> for HR/recruiting types at those firms and sending a message like that could
> probably be done in under an hour, and I'd think it might be a bit more
> effective than the ad._

If you do several targeted searches like this in a month LinkedIn now blocks
the results and says "Looks like you are a power searcher, upgrade to premium
to see results". It even blocks the "people also viewed" results on individual
profiles. Makes it nearly impossible to actually find a number of specific
recruiters.

~~~
fecak
I believe you, but I have a standard account and run lots of searches (maybe a
couple hundred a month?) without running into this issue. I expect by
'several' you must be doing several hundred searches a month to get that
issue, or scrolling through lots of profiles (looking at 10 pages of results
for each search).

I often do searches as an exercise with clients live, and I use the filters
(location, title, etc.) to try and target results so I'm not scrolling through
pages of profiles.

~~~
jcomis
Far, far less. Search a company like "Airbnb", view employees, filter the
results by geo, job title, whatever, and parse through the pages. Do this a
few times with different companies and you get blocked. I don't do this often,
certainly less than 20 times per month, and hit the paygate. Perhaps they have
different limits for different accounts, but I have never, ever conducted
hundreds of searches.

~~~
fecak
That's interesting. I know I'm well over 20 a month on searches like that. I'd
wonder if they base it on other things (like connections). I did have a paid
account in the past, but it's been a few years since I opted for the free one.

~~~
hysan
It’s possible they have an A/B test running to see if limiting searches
increases Premium subscription conversion. You’re probably in the control
bucket.

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motohagiography
Be very careful with "free linkedin credit," and giving them a credit card.
Find in the LinkedIn interface where you can set the total spend you want on
ads, as LinkedIn has auto-renewed card payments for ads without a notification
equivalent to say, the ones you get for trivial things people in your network
do.

Also, if you complain, they do communications not by email where you own the
records, but via their user interface. I had a ~$300 ad spend balloon to
almost $2000 and only caught it when I saw the credit card bill. They had been
renewing the spend and charging the card without sending an email or regular
account notification, as though to run it up before it was discovered. Their
representatives commitment to repay the amount does not seem to have been
fulfilled either.

When you are unsatisfied with being ripped off, they try to convince you that
they are sympathetic to your incompetence, but they are keeping your money and
you should be ok with that.

In short, avoid.

~~~
bananaeater
I use privacy.com to get virtual credit cards with controlled limits to avoid
surprises like this. Or use prepaid Visa cards.

