[dboreham]

Kind of. I've had a strict policy since LinkedIn launched of only connecting with people I've actually met and had at least some meaningful conversation with. Most of my contacts are former work colleagues. I think this makes my feed and audience a bit less spammy and grifty.

[ericmay]

Never connect with anyone you haven’t met. If a work colleague or someone is on a call and doesn’t use video, no connection either. Don’t upload and store your resume on LinkedIn. There is no reason to do so.

Also, I don’t recall where this setting is, but make the default behavior such that if someone finds you and tries to connect with you, they actually follow you instead. This cuts down aggressively on spammers because in order to actually connect with you they would have to view your profile, open the … menu, and then click connect. If they aren’t paying attention they’ll just follow you instead of connect which means you can broadcast to them but they can’t broadcast to you.

[IshKebab]

Why? It's pretty useful for connecting with recruiters in my experience, and I don't think anyone can actually do anything just because they have a connection with you.

I do ignore the connections from random students though tbf.

[ericmay]

Connecting with recruiters is mostly a waste of time, and generally anyone can just fake being a recruiter. Once someone has a connection with you they can see your extended network, they know where you work, they find out all information you have shared with on your profile, &c. The recruiter may be using you to connect with someone else. You also start to consume their content since you are connected. Better to let them follow you and then when it's time to reach out to offer you a job/send an in-mail.

Generally speaking, unless you operate at an elite level or at an elite institution, you're not getting a ton of worthwhile cold intros from recruiters.

[IshKebab]

> Connecting with recruiters is mostly a waste of time

Probably depends on the field but this definitely isn't always true. I've got my last two jobs through recruiters, and speaking to colleagues a lot of them do too.

> they can see your extended network, they know where you work, they find out all information you have shared with on your profile

This is public anyway though? Isn't that the point of LinkedIn?

> You also start to consume their content since you are connected.

I don't because I don't read LinkedIn. I pretty much only use it to get jobs. Although I have actually started posting technical stuff I've done there because people actually read it (I guess other people do read LinkedIn tbf!)

> Generally speaking, unless you operate at an elite level or at an elite institution, you're not getting a ton of worthwhile cold intros from recruiters.

I'm definitely not elite level and I would say ~20% of the jobs I get from LinkedIn recruiters are of interest. That's pretty good! Almost all of them are at least relevant to my field (silicon verification). Sometimes I get stuff about mechanical engineering validation, or software jobs that aren't relevant but that's pretty rare. It must depend on the field. Maybe the country too?

[ericmay]

> This is public anyway though? Isn't that the point of LinkedIn?

You can limit this. I don't think it's necessarily the point of LinkedIn - i.e. for others to connect with you and then have full visibility into all of the details of everyone you know and whatever you have on your profile. It's a bit naive to assume that operating in this manner doesn't make you a prime target for scammers, social engineers, hackers, &c., or even worse - solicitors.

> My experience is different

Yea, everyone has different experiences. I'm just describing how the platform generally works, as a matter of fact.