[ctrlaltdestroy]

LinkedIn has always stayed close to my heart. I'm currently on my third job, and I found all of them through LinkedIn. But I find it incredibly hard to like their new UI. They try hard to look like Facebook, when they really have no reason to do so. LinkedIn messaging is supposed to be professional messaging like email, but they turned it into a chat window. The "news feed" used to be useful and relevant, now I see memes and irrelevant sponsored posts. I try to check the site at least once a day, and in the past 3-4 weeks I find myself leave the site in less than 30 seconds. The home page is so heavy that you can almost feel it. I deleted my facebook account recently for some reasons, and I find the exact same reasons on LinkedIn now.

[drewrv]

This might seem weird but I've never heard of someone getting a job via Linkedin. I mostly get recruiter spam. Do you work in tech? I've heard outside of tech the site is indispensable. Care to share any tips on how to use it for job hunting?

[ctrlaltdestroy]

Yes I'm a software engineer. I guess I got lucky in unintentionally doing the right things that eventually helped me out. Here are some tips.

1. When I was doing Masters, in order to not forget every little academic project I did, I documented them on LinkedIn and put the code on github and linked it.

2. People would be against doing this, but when I was searching for internships, I kept adding any recruiter I came across to my network. Especially with recruiters from well-known companies (like MS, Google, Intel etc), I add them aggressively and was sure to do (3) below.

3. When adding someone to my network, instead of the default template message, I wrote something about myself, like "Hi I am currently doing my Masters in CS at <univ> university and I am looking for internship opportunities. Please take a look at my profile and let me know if you think I might be a match for something".

4. Always kept my profile updated as I took more courses, did side projects etc. This way, my network got updates about me, and they were able to see that I was getting more knowledge and experience. The recruiters and other professionals who were not able to find a match for me before now start to think may be they should give me a shot.

5. Network, network and network. I shared interesting tech articles I found online, liked others' posts about such articles etc. This might seem obvious, but don't "like" memes and funny statuses. I grew my network to the point that I had 400+ connections. But only about 200 of them were people I actually know and the rest were recruiters/professionals in the field/startup CEOs etc. The downside of this is that I now often get recruiting messages when I'm no longer in the job market. I save those messages hoping that I would find them useful one day.

TL;DR is that keep your profile updated and rich with content, and network as much as you can. Be professional, try to take time to respond to the recruiters who reach out to you. Even if you are not interested in their company, take a minute to just say so. It may help you in the future.

[drewrv]

Thanks!