Every career website talks about LinkedIn like it’s the second coming of God. But nobody in my immediate circle has received a job offer or anything of value from their LinkedIn profiles. Personally, I’ve gotten a lot of spam and a few recruiters asking about temp/worse positions than the one I have. I’m not really in the job-hunting market but will probably be soon. To me, though, LinkedIn seems quite useless.
Even worse, I spoke to a friend in recruiting and she told me her company uses LinkedIn not to find candidates, but to specifically exclude candidates. In her words, she thinks LinkedIn has lost more candidates jobs than it has gotten candidates jobs. She doesn’t do this, but she’s heard of people that look for things like the graduation year (a proxy for age), looks, and any inconsistencies between tailored resume and LinkedIn profile, etc (she does do the last one). Say you emphasized something like excel modeling on your resume (which you did) but left it off of LinkedIn to emphasize other skills, this could hurt you.
But the really skeevy part was she said some recruiters will look through contacts to see if there are any contacts in common (she works in a contracting field where everybody kind of knows everybody and this is really true among recruiters ). And, even though you didn’t list this contact as a reference to the job, a quick “how was this guy” conversation can happen at a happy hour or via text.
It makes sense: She stated there are generally more than 5 people that meet the minimum qualifications and her job is to weed them down to 2-3 for the interview round. Note: Recruiters are not there to do the hiring, that’s the job for managers and peers. They are there to present the best candidates of the qualified applicants, so it’s essentially a culling step.
She made it seem like LinkedIn was actually a barrier to a job more than a help. I assume LinkedIn may make it easier for you to develop a professional network for job referrals, but it’s unlikely a person that you know mostly through the site (and don’t talk to often) will put their necks on the line for a referral.
And maybe we’re both being extra paranoid here, but it seems the information you give up is not as valuable as what you receive from the site. I was wondering if anybody has had actual experience with job hunting in LinkedIn and is she/I wrong about the site’s value?
didn’t read past your first paragraph…i got my current gig by adding someone on linkedin and then offering to chat over coffee, so take that for what it’s worth
Very interesting. I think of it as Facebook, but for your work friends. Keep my profile private, for exactly the reasons above (suspicious of corporate snoopers).
I got an interview at a big five bank here in Canada. I looked on LinkedIn to find someone in the same position as I was applying for. I messaged them, and through chatting in the linkedin messenger, learned exactly how their interview had gone before they started at the bank 3 months earlier.
I was able to practice and have answers ready for their questions, as well as know what the quantitative testing entailed. In the end, I got the job.
LinkedIn can be a powerful networking tool., and moreover a great tool for landing leads to obtain employment. You just need to leverage it the right way.
overall I think Linkedin is better than average I have been contacted by INTERNAL recruiters 2x on LinkedIn and both led to offers (they wanted to poach me, and I was employed at the time) the few times where i was doing the job hunting, I definitely found more luck applying through Linkedin vs applying to job database sites. twice I tried reaching out to basically strangers at shops I was interested in asking if they would forward along my resume. neither times led anywhere
My guess is it’s like most things. If you’re in you are in. If you’re trying to break in it is a hindrance because it’s easier for the connected to find opps.
I endorsed a former co-worker for a skill, who asked what I was up to, who told another former co-worker, who told a guy who runs a thing, who offered me a consulting job last week. Thanks Linkedin!
Maybe it’s that I’m only 6 years out of high school or class sizes were about 125 at my high school, but I find these people that I otherwise probably wouldn’t have talked to again are overly eager to be of assistance when I reach out to them out of the blue. I don’t mind recruiters contacting me even if they are jobs I’m not interested in because I can tell them what I am interested in and maybe some day in the future they’ll find it and contact me from their lists.
The main take away from your conversation is that you shouldn’t have a poor quality LinkedIn profile and that you need to watch what you do on the website… If you can’t keep it up to date and matching the resume you’re distributing then you shouldn’t have a profile. It’s not something you can set up and forget.
I get contacted every month once sometimes twice … on linkedin.com depends from person to person… try to expand your network as much as you can … and join groups… to make sure you come up in searches when people look for a specific skill
I get frequent contacts from recruiters about relevant positions to my current one. Got a cold reach out by a recruiter to get me to my current job and got a significant salary bump etc so its not useless. I also am not entry level though and I dont remember getting much value from it earlier in my career
I get contacted a lot for quant roles. Is this a racist thing? My current job is not a quant position at all. If the recruiter is a hot woman, I generally write them a polite message to explain the situation.
I’m guilty for replying to pretty girls that reach out through Linkedin asking for career advice, while ignoring men and average-ugly looking women. if I had a priest, that would be my confession
That could be it. It’s hard out here for a black man. Apparently I need to be a hot Asian chick. I generally do “whiten up” my resume. My first name is Africanized but I use my first initial and middle name (which is not). Maybe I should go without a photo on LinkedIn?
I use Linkedin to connect to people whom I meet when I have no business cards (e.g. the position has just changed/ cards are at the printer). Maybe it is just me, but I have never had luck with HHs, but the Linkedin-HH-cruisers are the worst type: I had one begging for a meeting and then failing to call. When I called up his firm with a polite WTF question, his colleague told me to wait till like 9pm for a call-back. Of course, it never happened, but I wrote complaint to his boss via Linkedin about his employee’s lack of professionalism!