Maybe that is the reason why it sucks for the author.
I use LinkedIn as my personal CV and have gotten a job through it. If I had to search for a new job it would probably be through LinkedIn, Stackoverflow and other smaller sites for remote workers.
LinkedIn is better than all other general career sites, much much better and I can always point people there if they want my CV.
Honestly, 99% of the requests I get are recruiters, so I don't see why I would deny those requests. Only ones I turn down are these offering me jobs in another city - not interested in moving. Best case I get offered something good, worst case, what they have to offer at the moment doesn't interest me and I still have a bunch of recruiters I can ping back when I'm job searching.
Recruiters are paying for LinkedIn and can message you whenever they want, why do you need them to be a connection?
I take the exact opposite approach and only exclude recruiters. I figure by doing this my network is my legitimate business connections which I can use to further myself professionally.
> legitimate business connections which I can use to further myself professionally
Legitimately curious, how do you use these connections to further your career? Other than coworkers and people interested in hiring me and/or recruiters, and some bigger names, I didn't really see any other use to LinkedIn yet...
To be fair, I said "can" use them, not necessarily that I do :)
But, I have actually reached out to connections to discuss business opportunities. Since the connections live in the world where I have done business, they are more likely to know and trust that I can deliver on their business needs.
They have a gazillion other connections they'll put you in indirect contact with, making it easier to view their profiles, message them, etc. Unless you're trying to "inbox zero" LinkedIn or really care about curating your feed or are adding really infamous characters I can't see much downside to accepting requests.
Sure, I guess they put you in contact with them, but why would that person talk to you? If they'll talk to random people on the internet, why not just email them or DM them on Twitter or use any other means beyond LinkedIn?
If, however, that person sees that they are connected to you via some other person they know and trust, I think they'll be more likely to take you serious.
How do I know their personal Twitter, if they even have one? LinkedIn is specifically professional, so if I have a professional query for a stranger it seems like a much better venue then tracking down the person on Facebook or Twitter (assuming I even know who, specifically, I'm looking for, and can find them, on these other sites).
Like what? As far as I can tell, the more contacts you have, the more mutuals you'll have, leading to an easier time contacting people you actually want to talk to. I just accept everyone because I see little downside. I'm not there to chat.
How often do people actually get cold-introduced from someone they simply "connected" with on LinkedIn to someone else? What incentive would they have?
The only unknown connections I get are either recruiters in geographies or industries I'm not interested in, or random people from India because I have a handful of legitimate Indian connections.
"I can always point people there if they want my CV."
That's a little risky because LI sometimes shows an auth wall - a blank page with a login dialog. It looks like they don't show it every time, but I've seen it happen. I moved on without logging in.
Just delete your LinkedIn. I did. It's great. People just email me now and email is way better in almost all ways. I can filter it more easily, I can forward it more easily, the spam filter catches clueless recruiters. Everything is literally better with no drawbacks at all.
Also, after being exposed to the OSINT community via the Arms Control community, I learned how crazy dangerous it is to have your whole organization on there.
If I ever have a company with employees I'm going to make it part of the employment agreement (and a fireable offense) to add the position to LinkedIn. It's a complete gold mine for competitors and social engineers. People can put "Long Term Data Science Contract" if they really want to, but ideally I'd be able to convince them to just delete it or, at the very least, ramp up the security settings after deleting fake connections.
It's definitely useful, but mostly for other people.
So I had the pleasure of watching a non-evil social engineer at work once. He thought about humans like I think about networks. He treated LinkedIn like a network map. He treated secretaries like firewalls.
He started with the coop students. He'd pretend to be from the university the coop student went to. Of course the call gets forwarded. Of course he does a full interview with the coop student and learns their tech stack. Coop student doesn't know better so questions like:
"We're trying to make sure we train our students with the technology that is actually used in the field. Are they giving you guys Macs or PCs? PCs, eh? Windows or Linux? Great. Oh, one last thing, Dell is sponsoring a new building; any chance you guys are on Dell? Oh, Lenovo; ok. No problem. Can you transfer me to your boss [the head of IT] I have some questions for him."
Bossman, who they know isn't within earshot of the coop because they asked the student if they had enough space from their boss before the interview, picks up the phone.
"Hi Mr. Bossman I'm Steve, your new Lenovo rep, calling about some great new gear we have that we think you guys might really enjoy. Studies are showing that high density pixel laptops are better for worker productivity, but before we do a full pitch to Frank [the decision maker at the company, which we learned from LinkedIn / interviewing the coop] we'd like to make sure it is what you guys in IT would really want. Can we send a couple over for free and get your comments about what you think?"
Bam. Root of the head of IT. Because you control the actual laptop you throw in a GSM card and not even network monitoring would set off alarm bells. Took one phone call that wouldn't have been possible without LinkedIn.
Someone scraped LinkedIn to find ICE employees [0]. It's common to look at job openings to figure out what a company might be working on next, conversely you can sometimes draw conclusions on how those skunkwork programs are going by seeing if key people still work for the company (if they're highly specialised).
These seem like pretty lightweight dangers. So your competitor can get a list of your employees. Who cares? You can go there and get a list of people working for my employer if you want.
These also seem like concerns for the employer, not the employee. What danger would motivate an employee to delete their account?
The only real danger I could think of is if you have a database administrator working for you and it says as much on LinkedIn, you could then check that DB admins qualifications that they have also provided on LinkedIn and determine the specific tech stack that your company is using. Example: John Smith is an expert in Oracle 11, John works at your company, for an attacker, they would then focus on potentially exploiting that system version.
I guess in the worst case someone could find out you're associated with an unpopular or controversial organization. I think the paranoia about someone finding your org chart is pretty extreme but I've worked at a place where they were like that.
Possibly one of the most annoying aspects of LinkedIn is the slimy way it tries to connect you to other people through spam. I recently received an email from LinkedIn saying a friend I know in real life wanted to connect. I talked to him and he said he never made such a request, so it turns out LinkedIn reached out on his behalf. What benefit does this have to anybody?
LinkedIn probably did a "Let us help you connect with people you know!" and you friend said "OK! Here's permission to access my contacts!"
At least I think that's how it used to work. Their user interface was vague about exactly what it will send on your behalf, but then they phrase it like "Bob wants to connect with you!"
No, Bob just made the mistake of expecting to be presented with a list of people they might want to connect with, rather than silently spamming everyone they've ever emailed with a contact request.
There's a "people you know" screen and some of them it says "add friend" and some it says "invite" (or something to that effect), and the latter will send them an e-mail asking them to join LinkedIn.
The strangest thing for me was when it suggested I link with a guy who'd been a college friend of my father's, who I've not seen in person since my dad's funeral (long before Linkedin existed). How the hell did they do that? It was pretty creepy.
> I know people have used LinkedIn to find jobs. I never have. I know people use LinkedIn to sell products. It’s never worked for me... In short, I know people like LinkedIn.
> I think it’s hot vomit in a paper bag.
In other words, "I'm throwing a tantrum because I don't like this thing other people like." This is the attitude that keeps me away from otherwise mature, smart people on Twitter too.
Yes, LI is spammy, but a lot of people say they find my content on LI. It's a professional network, it's not really supposed to be fun.
If you don't like the show, just change the channel.
"I’ve never met a recruiter on there." I am by no means a fan/regular user of LinkedIn, but if you are an engineer in the Bay Area, LinkedIn is pretty damn great for getting random dm's from recruiters.
There is also such a thing as a good recruiter who does intelligent searches, finds good matches, and then reaches out selectively to non-random strangers. Those are the ones I actually want to hear from, and I have gotten jobs from such communications via LinkedIn.
If they really are "spamming random strangers", then sure. And that seems to be most of the contact I get via LinkedIn.
But I did have one cold contact from a pretty legit recruiter that ended up turning into a pretty legit job. That may have been a fluke, but it might also be something that happens more often than I realize. Mostly I barely even read the recruiter messages; this one just happened to catch me on a rare day when I'm open to switching jobs.
My advice on how to make your LinkedIn experience not suck:
1) Do not let LinkedIn scan your contacts, your calendar, your anything.
2) Do not accept connections from people you have not actually worked with in some capacity.
3) Turn off all emails.
4) Turn off all app alerts.
Turning off alerts is my superpower for making any digital communications channel bearable, really. IMO I should only get alerts for messages that are at the level of seriously affecting career, family, life and limb, etc.
In terms of hearing from recruiters... it says where I work right on my LinkedIn profile. If they can't be bothered to reach out to me at work, how badly do they actually want to recruit me? I'm not interested in being one of 2,000 people receiving keyword-driven mass recruiting spam.
To build connections, I accept requests from people I've worked with, even if it was one project a while ago. I occasionally browse the "people you may know" screen in the phone app to see if there is anyone I want to add as a connection.
I didn't realise social networking could get much worse than peak Facebook and Twitter until LI implemented their own feed. Levels of fakeness and posturing I didn't think possible. Everyone interacts as if while on LI we are all in a super large business meeting and everyone is a participant.
I can't say LinkedIn has added a lot of value to my life. In fact I mostly forget it exists until I remember that I have a linkedin account every few weeks, take a look at it, accept the one connection request I have waiting, and then move on. I suppose it shows that I exist and am a human person, maybe. At least it shows that someone made an effort to put together a short profile for what appears to be a human person.
I've actually gotten a lot of job interviews through LinkedIn that eventually turned into job offers. Never posted anything, didn't network with anyone, just uploaded my resume, set a header image, and that was it. I've deleted it since then because those job offers never turned into jobs for reasons unrelated, but I mean it seems to get the job done if what you're after are jobs.
I agree, it sucks. It needs to be disrupted. There's got to be a better way to maintain professional and business relationships. Facebook has co-opted some of that need via FB groups.
I dislike the interface, it loads slow, almost 90% of messages are spam. They tried to be a content hub, but the only content hubs I read are HN, Quora, NYT and random blogs.
I do not want to use Facebook for professional purposes. That stuff does not need to coexist with my thoughts about the news, discussions about video games, vacation photos, and whatever else.
The news feed feels like a stream of PR releases, people I've never met keep asking to add me presumably to help them find jobs, and the mobile website experience is inhibited by multiple disruptive banners / pop-overs to use the app.
That said, I get people reaching out to me once or twice a week with opportunities for a new job. Most of these fit my qualifications, and it's how I landed my current gig. I don't need to look for jobs anymore, they come to me.
I find Linked-In pretty useful to stay in contact with former coworkers and fellow students from university.
To a journalist, whose contacts may be more accustomed to the benefits of actually staying in contact and who sees professional networking as part of their job, the benefits of a streamlined social networking sites may be much less clear, of course.
LinkedIn is okay if you use it well. I've gotten multiple contracts from there.
The platform could use a little maintenance though. The iOS app is an absolute crime and it would be good if there was some moderation. Some recruiters are absolutely horrible and it would be nice to be able to report them and actually get them banned.
Nearly every person I know despises LinkedIn, with the singular exception of the people who for some job capacity use it to find out other people's history and contact information, who merely dislike it. The constant emails are a big part of that.
It's a garbage app, but I got my current job through a recruiter from there, and I'm pretty sure if I need to do the same again I'll get a bunch of leads there. I don't know why anybody would ever use it unless they're currently looking for a job or recruiting though.
The best way to use LinkedIn I’ve found: 1. Turn off all notifications and badges. 2. Don’t allow any permissions, especially your contacts. 3. Log in at most once every 3 months or so, answer or ignore your messages, giving your actual email address to anyone you want to continue to talk with, and log out.
Skip “the feed”, job search, all the social network crap, and all LinkedIn's begging pleading to let them loose on your contact list.
All I ever got from LinkedIn was unverifiable "endorsements", spam, and user-hostile behavior (notifications that aren't notifications, dark UI/UX that tries to trick you into sending emails to all your contacts, etc).
Maybe that is the reason why it sucks for the author. I use LinkedIn as my personal CV and have gotten a job through it. If I had to search for a new job it would probably be through LinkedIn, Stackoverflow and other smaller sites for remote workers.
LinkedIn is better than all other general career sites, much much better and I can always point people there if they want my CV.