Linkedin - worth it?

Anything to do with the traditional world of get a degree, get a job as well as its alternatives
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Bankai
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Joined: Fri Jul 25, 2014 5:28 am

Linkedin - worth it?

Post by Bankai »

I'm in my current role 2 years now and, as roughly every 2 years, dissatisfaction starts to really build up and I'm getting ready for a change of scenery. This time, encouraged by a friend who got headhunted quickly after creating a profile, I thought I'd do just that and save myself time and effort of actively looking for a job. I only went as far as putting my email & password, but just couldn't force myself to click the 'register' button. The idea of displaying my privacy loving self out there for the whole world to see was just too much.

Now, I get it's not exactly rational but it's still pretty hard to overcome. Especially since I never had any sort of social media presence. So, is a linkedin profile worth it, do jobs really find you, or is it just some social-media-like networking nonsense? I only have a couple of data points from friends in my industry who used it succesfully, but I'm not sure the trade-off of giving up my privacy is worth it vs looking for a job the old-fashioned way, i.e. replying to adverts?

mathiverse
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Joined: Fri Feb 01, 2019 8:40 pm

Re: Linkedin - worth it?

Post by mathiverse »

I have been working about six years. I've done five job searches for full time positions in that time. I only changed jobs once even though I've done five job searches. Before that I did four or five job searches for internships in my industry. I work as a programmer in the United States.

I wouldn't sign up hoping that someone sends me a job that excites me. Most of the messages I get are from recruiters cold messaging based on loose matches to my experience. They don't take a detailed look at my experience. Seems like they are cold messaging or spamming. These contacts are rarely useful in the moment, but if I didn't have contacts for a given company and their company recruiter sends me some recruiter spam, then I can contact them later when the moment is right to ask for an interview. That works well. To be clear, I've never gotten a job *offer* from LinkedIn, merely contacts asking if I'd like to interview.

Before I had contacts in the industry I work in, LinkedIn was very useful due to the fact I could cold message tens of recruiters until someone finally gave me an interview for a given company. I could also cold message people who worked at companies I wanted to work for, but that I had a weak connection to and ask for a referral. When I had no connections, LinkedIn was my way in.

Nowadays, I have friends of friends at pretty much every company I am interested in contacting. To get an interview and find a good position, I'd talk to those friends of friends and get a referral. If I wanted to find companies that I haven't heard of to apply to, then I think I have better ways to find and apply to those companies than hoping someone reaches out to me about them on LinkedIn. And when I last changed jobs, LinkedIn was not useful at all in finding a role suited to my interests and desires. All of the messages I got from people on LinkedIn were fairly generic despite my experience and interests being written right on my profile. The most useful tool during my job search was a friend who worked on a team I was interested in joining who was willing to tell me about the position available and also willing to refer me directly to the hiring manager.

macg
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Location: USA-FL

Re: Linkedin - worth it?

Post by macg »

For me, LinkedIn was useless. I was on it from when it started until about 3 years ago, when I deleted everything. Not once did a job find me (edit: to clarify, I did get generic messages, but never anything remotely close to an actual job in my field or interests), and no job I applied to through LinkedIn ever even made it to an interview. This, with a robust IT career/history.

That being said, let's be clear - I'm not the type to use the social media "sell yourself" / "post a ton" / etc type of mindset. I am sure people that extensively use it, like those who constantly post/comment/reach out , would find some success. I'm just not that type of personality, I guess.

The majority of jobs I have gotten have been through old school "networking" - friend or friend of a friend recommends a job or company.

2Birds1Stone
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Re: Linkedin - worth it?

Post by 2Birds1Stone »

I use LinkedIn professionally in my current career (sales), but it's been very useful for my own career advancement. It serves as a live resume of sorts, and if you have recommendations from both clients and employers that can be a huge differtiator vs. ending up in a pile of resumes.

I did find two separate employment opportunities through LI, one where the company found me without any effort on my part.

It is turning into Facebook 2.0 these days

bostonimproper
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Joined: Sun Jul 01, 2018 11:45 am

Re: Linkedin - worth it?

Post by bostonimproper »

I got my most recent job through the hiring manager messaging me on LinkedIn. The hit to miss ratio is meh (I’m interested in only about 10% of the messages I receive), but it’s the easiest way to passively generate inbound opportunities.

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Seppia
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Joined: Tue Aug 30, 2016 9:34 am
Location: South Florida

Re: Linkedin - worth it?

Post by Seppia »

2Birds1Stone wrote:
Sun Aug 01, 2021 3:43 pm
I use LinkedIn professionally in my current career (sales), but it's been very useful for my own career advancement. It serves as a live resume of sorts, and if you have recommendations from both clients and employers that can be a huge differtiator vs. ending up in a pile of resumes.

I did find two separate employment opportunities through LI, one where the company found me without any effort on my part.

It is turning into Facebook 2.0 these days
100% this for me as well.
I have worked for 5 companies since 2004. In 3 instances the first contact was through LinkedIn.
Probably useless in many situations, but if you live in the corporate world of companies with 200M+ and up revenues, especially in th CPG business, it's kind of mandatory to be on it.

What makes a HUGE difference is curating your profile: have a pic, fill in all details, update your resume when appropriate.
No need to use it as Facebook 2.0, but a nice profile is a must.

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Viktor K
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Joined: Sat Jul 30, 2016 9:45 pm

Re: Linkedin - worth it?

Post by Viktor K »

My LinkedIn is very SEO’d, and I get 3-10 invitations each week to apply for jobs / get on a phone screen. Most of those I ignore.

But over the last year and a half, the two times I’ve responded / been on the job hunt, I’ve made it to final rounds with companies + secured offers.

I apply as well during that time on LinkedIn, and that also has led to phone screens. I also find it’s good practice for interviews, since I can have a dozen “test” phone screens lined up in a week.

Hristo Botev
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Joined: Tue Jul 17, 2018 3:42 am

Re: Linkedin - worth it?

Post by Hristo Botev »

My sense is that in my own field, law, it's less of a thing now than it used to be. In fact, I've noticed lately that a lot of folks who I work with (clients, opposing counsel, etc.) no longer have LinkedIn accounts, or if they do, they are very sparse. My understanding is that this is driven by a desire to get less junk communications; and as for clients/in-house attorneys, there's no real need for them to "sell themselves" via social media, because even when they are looking to jump ship to another in-house job, their worlds are all pretty small and so everything is word of mouth anyway.

I still have a profile, and it's current; but the last time I probably logged into my own LinkedIn account was when I switched jobs, so that I could update the profile. I'm sure some people in my field are able to use it effectively as a business development tool, but I'm not that motivated. I use LinkedIn quite a bit for online investigation purposes--researching enforcement matters or collecting evidence; so, there's that aspect as well--I'm very likely to find something I can use against you in a court of law that you put on LinkedIn or some other social media outlet.

This could all just be a reflection of the fact that I'm about 15 years into my career now, and most of the people I work with are about that far along as well, if not further. I'll note that when we have hired folks at my firm, the absence of a LinkedIn profile wouldn't have raised any flags (it may have in the past; not now)--but, of course, there's all sorts of things that could steer you away from a candidate (even if subconsciously) that you might see on their LinkedIn page, especially as it's become more Facebook 2.0.

Gilberto de Piento
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Joined: Tue Nov 12, 2013 10:23 pm

Re: Linkedin - worth it?

Post by Gilberto de Piento »

I have a very detailed LinkedIn profile that gets the top tier rating for completeness from LinkedIn itself. I get requests to connect from random people I have no connection to a couple of times per year. I get headhunter interest for jobs that I am clearly not qualified for about once per year. That said, I am in a niche field and job and not an appealing candidate for the most part. I dont think LinkedIn has been useful to me but when I created my profile LinkedIn seemed to be a must have.

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