[covidien]

> From a professional standpoint LinkedIn gave me a lot of value for free

i'm curious what others see as value from the platform.

in my narrow view:

- i have a list of connections id most likely be able to contact off platform

- a feed full of virtue signaling and mostly useless content

- messages from random recruiters. usually the full extent of the interaction is: phonecall, redo resume and send over, ghost (40+ interactions like this last year with 2 interviews resulting)

i spoke with someone in career services and their #1 suggestion was to start messaging people i don't know on linkedin looking for "connections" to expand my network.

perhaps i don't get "it" but it seems like for some its incredibly valuable and for the rest its actually a net negative all things considered.

[wintermutestwin]

The value I see in LinkedIn:

1. My linkedin contact list is >300 people that I worked closely with over the years and all have seen me kick ass. I have actual email addresses for <10% of them.

2. I can browse my list and see where they are currently working. "oh gee, Mary works at coolCo, I should reach out to her because I' like to work for/with coolCo."

3. When I want to let them know that I started a new business venture, I can send them a message that is less obtrusive than an email.

4. If I give a prospective client my linkedin, they can see a) a brief summary of my resume, b) that I have a lot of contacts in x space, and c) that they may know some of the people I have worked with over the years. These all give me some measure of credibility.

[JauntTrooper]

Both my current job and my previous job were initiated by recruiters who contacted me on LinkedIn.

LinkedIn has been extremely valuable to me. The recruiters who contact me are usually from professional executive search firms and highly relevant, though I only get a few a year.

I think the level of relevance depends on the industry though. I'm in finance/banking and fairly senior.

[snowwrestler]

Curious... do you consider these instances of recruitment to be incidental to your use of LinkedIn? I.e. do you get value out of LinkedIn other than these offers?

Or is attracting these sorts of offers the only/main reason you're on LinkedIn?

[JauntTrooper]

I guess when I stop to think about it, I do get a lot of use out of it.

I use LinkedIn to contact professional colleagues when I don't have their email addresses. I've met 95%+ of the people on my contact list at some point in my career, and it's easy to send them a message to catch up. That's especially useful if they've switched jobs and they lose their work emails.

I also sometimes search people I meet at events or job applicants to find out a bit more about their backgrounds and see if we're connected with anyone.

Sometimes when I'm researching a company or hedge fund for work I'll search LinkedIn to get some information about the firm below the senior-most executives.

It also lets me know when some of my colleagues are mentioned in the media or have TV/print interviews. I like following up with people about those.

I never post or like anything. My employer actually forbids it due to securities regulations. I had to give our Compliance Department access to my account through a special program so they can monitor & log everything.

[ghaff]

I think people's job patterns varying is part of it. For me, I've mostly stayed at my relatively few jobs for a long time (10 years or more) and every job after the one immediately after grad school have been through people I knew. Others are hopping around a lot more and are more often through recruiters looking for some particular keyword skill.

LinkedIn is pretty useless for the former--except as a Rolodex--but anecdotally can be very useful for the latter.

[virgilp]

I also tend to stay a lot at a given job (e.g. slightly more than 10y at the last one) but still found the current job through LinkedIn. I do 2 things:

1. connect to all recruiters, politely decline with a standard message if obviously not interested

2. when I get a potentially-interesting offer, I reply with "that's all fine and well, but I make <absurdly_high_total_comp> now; do you want to continue the discussion?". (note: I'm not lying).

I used to ignore recruiters at point 1, until I realized it costs me almost nothing to politely decline and earns goodwill; today's junior recruiter that works for a crappy company might be in 10 years the HR director at a company you want to work for. Why not be in touch?

Over the years, this adds up, a handful of opportunities actually said "yes" at point 2, and for one of them I actually went to interviews & got the job (and the very-good-offer).

[ghaff]

Fair enough. If the position is actually relevant (i.e. not obviously scattershot spam--which I do generally just ignore), I'll at least politely decline. And I have had a couple followup phone calls but there wasn't really mutual interest for various reasons.

But, TBH, I'm far enough along in my career in this point and have a sufficiently specialized role (my current job had the description written for me after I started talking to the company) that random recruiting is unlikely to be a fit.

[covidien]

agree - and in the case of the latter it feels like its being permeated by influencer culture, by that i mean (im going to paint with a broad brush here) recruiters and the recruiting industry seems to have exploded and with seemingly non-technical agents. so they naturally gravitate towards shiny things - FAANG positions, hot tech (ex: React), well known schools. outside of power users, its becoming a requirement to play the game if you want to have any success. /oldmanyellsatcloud