Ask HN: Do you have to use LinkedIn to get hired?

You can totally get hired without linkedin. Where you will get hired will depend a lot on who you are and your skills.

If you're a relatively junior IC, you may not have time to build up an IRL professional network to help you get a job. You may not have a crazy in-demand resume that jumps to the top of the list for senior/staff jobs. This means you need to find jobs instead of letting them come to you.

I've seen people say that reading linkedin is the ultimate resume - standard format, easy to read and parse, and all look the same. So if you're just doing resume drops on online web forms, missing out on that tells the hiring person they have to do more work to evaluate you. That could mean its "too much work" and they just skip you. YMMV but its a risk you take.

I've heard a lot of different takes on recruiters from linkedin. As a relatively mid-level engineer at FAANG, i get constant recruiters messaging me (1 per week min). I found 50% to be not worth my time ever, and the other 50% are recruiters for big/reputable companies (eg. faang et al.) and some of them have given me interviews/leads, - i've even taken a job that started on linkedin via a recruiter cold message.

Personally, i understand why linkedin is annoying to use. It has lots of antipatterns, etc. That said, part of getting hiring is "playing the game" unless you're truly 1/1000000. By sitting out linkedin (when doing resume-drop style applications), you're signaling to the company hiring you that you either are too lazy to update a profile once a year, or your morals against linkedin are stronger than your desire to help them hire you. Its like people who don't keep their resume TLDR: Unless you're special enough to make your own, or you have a strong personal network already, following the status quo may help you.

(also its LinkedIn not linked-in, skip the hyphen)

This is sarcasm right?

> The quickest way to get hired is to create a technical blog, write a bunch of interesting articles, create a couple of interesting projects, and make them go viral.

Is obviously not quick. But tbh is a dream way to land a job.

I think we have this post every few months on this site, so let me explain how recruiting works. There's 3 types/market for recruiters and they almost never overlap.

The first are "body shop style" recruiters. It's basically a numbers game where they try to cold-call as much people with githubs/linkedin or blogs that reference programming. They don't know programming (not even what's the difference between languages or front-end/back-end) and are looking for a list of buzzwords. They'll send copy-pasted messages (you can tell because it references tech you never used or never even claimed to have used). If you respond (and really you shouldn't) you won't be able to get any relevant information about the position because... they don't have it. These recruiters are often contracted by external firms in "best value countries" and are given canned response to message you. That's probably what the author encountered.

Second type are professional recruiters. Their salary is by commissions will often be a percentage of your salary. They are knowledgeable about programming and tech (often former engineers who wanted a break from coding!). They typically are looking to match specific profiles to specific jobs at client companies. This goes all the way to recruiters specialized in C-Suite executives (and you can picture the commission finding a CEO will bring in). Their messages will be personalized and you shouldn't hesitate to reply back even if you aren't looking for a job. They know that most great software engineers are almost never openly looking for a job so their goal is to be on good terms with a large number of talented developers so that the minute they start looking for a job they can match them with positions. You'll know when you encounter one.

Third type is basically referrals. A players attract A players, smart companies know it. Make sure your referral bonus is a percentage of total comp. It's probably the most effective way of recruiting (it has an insane signal to noise ratio). But you only get access to that type of network by... bringing value and being part of it in the first place!

My point was more that even Google -- a company with a 1.9 trillion dollar market cap -- is now relying on cut-and-paste-error recruiters, even when sourcing for roles which pay $500k+.

I've seen a lot of cringey recruitment communications over the years, but rarely encountered it for very senior roles at top companies in the past. Seems way more common now.

Are you trying to force them to see the blurb though? Van Halen could have put a callout to the brown M&M clause in a very prominent place in the contract, had a lot more venues see the clause and, by so doing, make it no longer a useful measurement of their attention to detail and level of effort.

https://www.insider.com/van-halen-brown-m-ms-contract-2016-9...