31–40 of 56 posts
I left the site over a month ago, I closed my account. I only receive weird emails from recruiters from it.
I mean, LinkedIn themselves were pretty shady before the Microsoft acquisition - multiple privacy violations, email spam, even had a class action lawsuit against them. Microsoft never cared. And anyone who set up a LinkedIn account knowing all this don't care either. I look at people who're still on LinkedIn the same way as people who're still on Facebook. They don't have my sympathies.
Fair, I guess. So what's a safe site for candidates to find jobs? Indeed isn't much better.
If there isn't a decent equivalent in your area, I'd say the next best option is to reach out to a bunch of recruitment agencies and leave your CV with them. Also create your own personal blog/site where you have your bio, examples of your work, and regular meaningful blog updates relavent to your field (which will improve search engine ranking and increase chances of companies reaching out to you).
But I reckon the best option generally is IRL networking, considering the current AI era - where recruiters are being spammed with AI-generated CVs, and they in turn are using AI to filter out CVs, so now there are specific AI tools to make the perfect CV matching a job description - but now everyone is using these tools, which makes it a nightmare for recruiters. So IMO the best option these days would be to make IRL connections.
I mean, LinkedIn themselves were pretty shady before the Microsoft acquisition - multiple privacy violations, email spam, even had a class action lawsuit against them. Microsoft never cared. And anyone who set up a LinkedIn account knowing all this don't care either. I look at people who're still on LinkedIn the same way as people who're still on Facebook. They don't have my sympathies.
A number of companies only announce job openings on LinkedIn, and if you are looking for a job (as I am) you would handicap yourself by not having a profile there. HR departments around the World are infatuated with LinkedIn, unfortunately.
My strategy is to give LinkedIn a minimum of information, use it for job search, and filter away most of their emails.
I look forward to the day where I can close down my LinkdIn account. But until then I have to put up with it.
As an aside, something that would get posted on LinkedIn from an external source of some salespeople or something I knew or have connections with having an article written up about them changing jobs. I fear I might have mentioned once I changed a job (not with the eye-sore of the standard images they provide though), but the long stories of how people spent X years, living the best time of their life, now needs to come to an end because they want to move to the next best time of their life, is tedious. I get it, you are enriched in your worklife. Don't rub it in.
But I am staying for the AI slop. It's just a stream of jokes, if they can come up in my feed again!
LinkedIn is one of the most annoying sites on the internet. Every time I mistakenly click a link, it automatically grabs my Google account and creates a new account and profile for me, which I then have to go in and delete. Yes, I finally figured out which arcane preferences settings across both LinkedIn and Google I had to tweak to stop this from happening, but I think it was only after ChatGPT was around to help me…
This isn't LinkedIn specific - the easily misclickable "one click to logon with Google" button showing up in browsers was a huge mistake and should never have existed. Reddit has started prompting too if you're not currently logged in, to just suddenly be logged in with Google.
LinkedIn is one of the most annoying sites on the internet. Every time I mistakenly click a link, it automatically grabs my Google account and creates a new account and profile for me, which I then have to go in and delete. Yes, I finally figured out which arcane preferences settings across both LinkedIn and Google I had to tweak to stop this from happening, but I think it was only after ChatGPT was around to help me…
Sorry, I don't understand. Somehow linkedin creates a new account (on linkedin? - so a brand new account?) without your agreement?
At the start, LinkedIn was great and you could really connect you to a vibrant community of former colleagues and weak relationships. I actually got fruitful introductions and evn job offers from those days.
Then, they wanted to become a social network. Because, you know, advertising... It started way before Microsoft.
We started to see "LION" (LinkedIn Open Network), it became a goal for some to have as many connections as possible. So, tons of connections, but no more answers to messages. No more introductions. Useless connections. LinkedIn encouraged that by allowing connection requests without knowing the email of the person. That's when spam started.
Then, messages became mostly irrelevant, simple commercial requests of people who did not give a sh*t who you were. I personally cut off all LinkedIn notifications from that day on. I guess a lot of people never read their messages anymore either, so it became impossible to get an introduction. What's a community worth when people cannot communicate with each other?
Then came the "let's be Facebook" idiotic strategy. People would post and repost other people's content, pure fantasies with no link to reality. 25-year-olds became management or strategy gurus. No more skills, only pretention. Add AI to that and you've got the most useless feed ever.
To add insult to injury, the mobile app has got the worst UX you can find, full of counter-patterns, buggy, slow, you name it.
And yet, they manage to charge $11000/year to headhunters. Or to sales reps. Or to advertisers.
We need a LinkedIn competitor.