LinkedIn has allowed me to experience what it's like to be a pretty girl on a dating site, except that my suitors are idiot recruiters offering terrible jobs I don't want.
Probably the best tool for b2b customer development and b2c professional services ever created. Testing concepts early by having documented third party validation on domain expertise is pretty invaluable. <a href="https://hunter.io/" rel="nofollow">https://hunter.io/</a> maps emails, where people are far more responsive, however referencing having looked them up on Linkedin to qualify the relevance of your outreach is overwhelmingly effective.
I have a profile set up there, but so far it's been useless to me other than to stay in touch with one or two others from a prior job. I hate their "news feed". None of the content is ever relevant or useful. The design is poor.<p>They also make poor use of notifications. My "friend requests" always shows 1 new notification- but it's a fake notification trying to get you to send out invites. I find user-hostile actions like that very off-putting.<p>Considering deleting the account, but I'm curious if just "having a profile/presence" on the service is useful or desired by employers? Not sure if I'm "losing out" on anything by not having an account.<p>The one thing I do like is that others you've worked with can "endorse" you for certain skills, but in reality I'm not sure how useful that is, ultimately.
I have received a lot of job offers through LinkedIn, but none of them ever appealed to me, so as far as my career prospects go it doesn't add much value. But it's nice to keep in touch with former colleagues, and to be able to see at a glance what your network is up to professionally.
I do not <i>want</i> to use LinkedIn. It is clearly not there to help <i>me</i> do anything except quantify myself to recruiters, which often becomes just another awful interview experience followed by a bad offer. And of course, used as a surveillance platform for my personal information, for the benefit of the creators of LinkedIn.
If you're only interested in it for job hunting, there's WAY better options.<p>I reopened my LinkedIn account after a long absence once I got into management. One of the first thing clients are going to do before hopping in a meeting with you is to pull up your LinkedIn page, and it's a way to show them you know WTF you're talking about. I keep joking with my team that I still need to add the obligatory "smiling white guy in a suit" headshot to my profile.<p>I also find interesting management/leadership articles in my feed. So, Twitter for deep down geeky tech stuff, LinkedIn for the business side, Facebook for what my niece had for dinner. Each serves a different purpose.
As a recent graduate (actively looking for a job) I have been using LinkedIn for a while, and I am very disappointed.<p>I get around one response per 50 applications I send via the platform.<p>Recruiters don't classify their posts correctly, so when I search for "entry-level" positions, I get mostly positions that require 5 years of experience, or just list all possible web technologies so they land more search queries, etc...<p>Example : I search for a position with PHP/JavaScript listed as technologies. Then when contacted by the recruiter it turns out to be a JavaEE position, but "knowing PHP and JavaScript is a plus".<p>I'd close my account if I wasn't this desperate.<p>Edit: Added example
I use LinkedIn to promote my training activities and to find connections -- for example, I used it to find a connection to the CEO of GitLab which resulting in a partnership that has already brought in additional training income (plus a really cool partner!!).<p>I used to write recommendations and have gotten some nice recommendations back. But then LinkedIn changed their UI and buried the recommendations.
My employer kinda mandates using LinkedIn... I have a couple of IFTTT recipes set up so that it looks as if I'm super active, while I only check once every other week to accept random friend requests.
I am curious if any of you actively use LinkedIn, if yes how? Or may be you can share tips on making use of LinkedIn, for hiring, networking or publishing content.