I'm seeing a lot of "submit your application" web forms with a required linked-in field. Would it be absolute folly to attempt to get hired without using linked-in? What are your experiences?
The submit your application is supposed to make it easier. One click instead of filling out all the information yourself. Most forms I saw had the option to just manually put it in too
We can’t read the mind of your hiring manager, but most places don’t strictly require a LinkedIn.
However, it’s so easy that you might as well just do it. You can have it set up and filled out in 10 minutes and it’s an easy link for people to pass around when discussing you as a candidate.
yes, but no, it isn't "just 10 minutes", you should give it the care and attention you'd give to your cv or any other professional presentation of yourself.
It's just... odd. It's a signal that the candidate has some reason for not wanting a LinkedIn account, which could range from a messy history to a passionate belief in not having an online record. All of which _might_ translate to a difficult candidate who isn't prepared to make it easier for the employer.
As ever with these kind of eccentricities, if the candidate is good enough they can pull it off, but otherwise it's a orange flag.
Agreed that there's a signal among those who decline to dump their work history publicly into the hands of the largest company in the world and its recruiter flock in exchange for maybe job leads. It is eccentric, unfortunately.
But reading that signal partially will filter out improperly. Aside from privacy, candidates who value their time don't want to be disturbed unless they have initiated.
Someone whose LI profile doesn't exist (or has just 'go to my site') is more experienced at the game.
It could signal that this person goes against the grain, maybe has a disagreeable personality, too cool to join the herd, might put up a fight about being asked to do other things. Some of these qualities can be very valuable, but most hiring managers don't know how to leverage these qualities. Tech people might be impressed, but hiring managers who live their lives in LinkedIn could be put off. Imagine trying to get a job as a recruiter without a LinkedIn profile. That would be impressive.
Not the person you are replying to, but one of the first classes on my "let's get a bachelors starting at 36 years old" required us to create a LinkedIn profile as an assignment if we didn't already have one. I think they've just become a de facto thing that is expected.
> I think they've just become a de facto thing that is expected.
Good god! Where in the world are you?
Here in Blightty, it wasn't that long ago having a linkedin account would count against some of our candidates.... as a candidate must have had their head in the sand not to be aware of the toxic behaviour of linkedin (spamming personal contacts) [1].
The United States, this was at a private 4-year university. I've seen gobs of job postings on company websites that, on the application section, ask for your LinkedIn profile link as well and my current employer is a very active user as are virtually all of the c-level employees.
I haven't had much luck in the last 10 years getting interviews via company's own hiring site. All my interviews come from recruiters (internal or external) pushing for me in the companies.
LinkedIn eliminates friction better than anything else in my opinion. Applying to a job with a single click is brilliant. I wouldn't bother with anything else unless I was targeting something specific like climate, startups, etc.
I joined LinkedIn early on. When I was working as an individual contributor I first thought it was super effective and I became a "LiON" who tried to build as large and as open a network as I possibly could.
At that time I got numerous jobs thanks to my LinkedIn profile. On top of that I would tell anybody who was listening, particularly anyone who was struggling in job searches, that they should join LinkedIn too.
I went through a phase of business development for a new idea and found that LinkedIn attracted an unlimited number of bullshitters to the point that I was starting to become a bullshitter. I was getting sick and tired of the spam email I was getting. I was angry and resentful all the time and starting to feel guilty for thinking horrible racist thoughts like "They should rename it to linked.in", etc. It just seemed everybody was a "consultant" named "Joe Blow" who had a company called "Joe Blow Incorporated" or a personal trainer, life coach, etc.
Around the time Trump got elected I deleted most of my social media accounts including my LinkedIn account.
Since then I did two job searches without LinkedIn. In one case I went from "damn i really have to get a job" to having a job in a month, in the other case it took a few months.
It is the only social network that I find worth engaging with and by that I mean just create your profile and fill in some of your data so recruiters have an idea of what you can do. You don't NEED it to get hired but it sure has helped me find new jobs more than once.
Hiring is a signal to noise problem. Know the signal they're filtering for, filtering tools in use, and you'll get an interview. If they're asking for a linked in profile, then it's a tool in use.
Participated in a lot of hiring at a hyper growth startup in London.
The recruiters get your CV, go to your linkedin. See if it matches good enough. Look throug your linked to see if there is something they can use (they are human resource after all) and then maybe push you one up in the hiring pipeline process. Next step is reading / skimming the other stuff you sent over.
Without linkedin you and they have more work in the first step, so even though I hate linkedin with a passion and use its stream mostly as an art project, for jobsearches you should use it.
No. I have never used LinkedIn to apply for a job, and have received multiple offers (and solicitations to interview) without ever having one. But I've also never worked or applied at a place that seemed to expect me to have a LinkedIn.
In my experience, having a personal website has all of the upsides of being on a "professional" social network with none of the downsides.
As an employer, I find LinkedIn profiles faster (and thus nicer) to screen (we're a company that doesn't ask for a set application format) - since you don't have to adjust your brain to the format! I'm less likely to miss stuff, but might skim faster versus reading your story.
That said, if someone just sends me (I'm cofounder, post series B startup) an email directly which is well thought out connecting your skills with what we're working on, I will 100% read it / consider it. This ticks a box that you're interested in what we're working on - which we need to feel to hire you.
I do not now look at the vast majority of submissions, since the vast majority of those are generic, so we have a full time recruiter looking through.
I think Linkdin is largely a productivity trap. There are whole articles out there about how to optimize Linkdin, but I’ve never glanced at it for the 100’s of people I’ve hired over my career.
I never used LinkedIn to land a job. I once received a relevant offer (compiler specialist located less than 500km away that requires relocating; the recruiter actually did a good job). I never got a ton of spammy offers, but I got enough to delete LinkedIn.
But YMMV. I also don’t have Facebook; I use GitHub as a portfolio page and do have some open source going on there.
Witnessing what happened to Marak, who broke his own npm libraries and got locked out of GitHub, my conclusion is that the platform does not operate on the user’s terms. Yet another mega corp.
I've gotten hired due to LinkedIn exactly once, and it was helpful. However, that's not how I "use" it. LinkedIn's best use is what it was intended for: a professional networking social media space. Here's how I've used it successfully.
Put your resume on LinkedIn. Send connect requests to people you've worked with and who you'd be willing to work with again. Accept connect requests from people you've either worked with or know from professional networking (meet ups, conferences, user groups, open source project collaborators).
Why?
If someone asks for your Resume, you can first point to your LinkedIn profile (less of a pain).
If someone has a job opening, they'll have a way to contact YOU about the opportunity (yes - I've had this happen multiple times).
If someone with a job opening pings you (hiring manager or team member NOT A RECRUITER!) you can "introduce" people and help a former co-worker find a job or contract work (I've done this a couple of times).
From time to time you'll get pings from former co-workers who might not have another way to contact you - It's nice to talk shop over beers.
Summary: LinkedIn lets you keep your professional network separate from your personal network.
As a counter to your anecdote, my last three jobs have come through LinkedIn and I use it as the SOLE platform for anything work-related. I refuse to apply for a job that doesn't ingest my LinkedIn profile information; my resume is just a PDF copy of my LinkedIn profile (which is fully public too); and I tell people to go to my LinkedIn profile because business cards died 20+ years ago.
I used LinkedIn to get a job. There was a company I wanted to work for. I reached out to a recruiter at the company on LinkedIn via DM. He set up some time to talk that day, and a formal interview happened a week later. Couldn't have been easier.
I've gotten hired twice via a linkedin "Stumble Upon" type process, but not used it to apply for a job (successfully, anyways). I typically have done that with the recruiter or company directly.
I don't switch jobs that often. My career has been at only 4 companies over 20 years so far.
I agree with other comments here, your LinkedIn profile is useful for showing people what you're about and what you can do at a high level. I know people who don't have linkedin because they are in-person networkers. They go to conferences to build relationships, and when they need a new job they work that social network that they built into their "little black book" by hand.
I haven't used it to get a job yet. But I do use it to keep a look out for future jobs, it's worth having. Every week I get a couple of messages from recruiters and it's just nice to know what the going rate is for different jobs and sometimes something might catch your eye.
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[ 2.2 ms ] story [ 267 ms ] threadHowever, it’s so easy that you might as well just do it. You can have it set up and filled out in 10 minutes and it’s an easy link for people to pass around when discussing you as a candidate.
As ever with these kind of eccentricities, if the candidate is good enough they can pull it off, but otherwise it's a orange flag.
Sorry, if someone is hiring based on whether I have a cricle-jerk social media account, then I don't want to work there.
I genuinely don't understand why you would think it's odd?
But reading that signal partially will filter out improperly. Aside from privacy, candidates who value their time don't want to be disturbed unless they have initiated.
Someone whose LI profile doesn't exist (or has just 'go to my site') is more experienced at the game.
Good god! Where in the world are you?
Here in Blightty, it wasn't that long ago having a linkedin account would count against some of our candidates.... as a candidate must have had their head in the sand not to be aware of the toxic behaviour of linkedin (spamming personal contacts) [1].
[1] https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/oct/07/linkedin-...
I haven’t had any problems interviewing with any of your who’s who companies in the tech industry.
Best of luck.
The advice I got when I started in tech 5 years ago was: you don’t have to like using linked-in, but you should use it.
At that time I got numerous jobs thanks to my LinkedIn profile. On top of that I would tell anybody who was listening, particularly anyone who was struggling in job searches, that they should join LinkedIn too.
I went through a phase of business development for a new idea and found that LinkedIn attracted an unlimited number of bullshitters to the point that I was starting to become a bullshitter. I was getting sick and tired of the spam email I was getting. I was angry and resentful all the time and starting to feel guilty for thinking horrible racist thoughts like "They should rename it to linked.in", etc. It just seemed everybody was a "consultant" named "Joe Blow" who had a company called "Joe Blow Incorporated" or a personal trainer, life coach, etc.
Around the time Trump got elected I deleted most of my social media accounts including my LinkedIn account.
Since then I did two job searches without LinkedIn. In one case I went from "damn i really have to get a job" to having a job in a month, in the other case it took a few months.
The recruiters get your CV, go to your linkedin. See if it matches good enough. Look throug your linked to see if there is something they can use (they are human resource after all) and then maybe push you one up in the hiring pipeline process. Next step is reading / skimming the other stuff you sent over.
Without linkedin you and they have more work in the first step, so even though I hate linkedin with a passion and use its stream mostly as an art project, for jobsearches you should use it.
In my experience, having a personal website has all of the upsides of being on a "professional" social network with none of the downsides.
That said, if someone just sends me (I'm cofounder, post series B startup) an email directly which is well thought out connecting your skills with what we're working on, I will 100% read it / consider it. This ticks a box that you're interested in what we're working on - which we need to feel to hire you.
I do not now look at the vast majority of submissions, since the vast majority of those are generic, so we have a full time recruiter looking through.
But YMMV. I also don’t have Facebook; I use GitHub as a portfolio page and do have some open source going on there.
Witnessing what happened to Marak, who broke his own npm libraries and got locked out of GitHub, my conclusion is that the platform does not operate on the user’s terms. Yet another mega corp.
Put your resume on LinkedIn. Send connect requests to people you've worked with and who you'd be willing to work with again. Accept connect requests from people you've either worked with or know from professional networking (meet ups, conferences, user groups, open source project collaborators).
Why?
If someone asks for your Resume, you can first point to your LinkedIn profile (less of a pain). If someone has a job opening, they'll have a way to contact YOU about the opportunity (yes - I've had this happen multiple times). If someone with a job opening pings you (hiring manager or team member NOT A RECRUITER!) you can "introduce" people and help a former co-worker find a job or contract work (I've done this a couple of times). From time to time you'll get pings from former co-workers who might not have another way to contact you - It's nice to talk shop over beers.
Summary: LinkedIn lets you keep your professional network separate from your personal network.
I don't switch jobs that often. My career has been at only 4 companies over 20 years so far.
I agree with other comments here, your LinkedIn profile is useful for showing people what you're about and what you can do at a high level. I know people who don't have linkedin because they are in-person networkers. They go to conferences to build relationships, and when they need a new job they work that social network that they built into their "little black book" by hand.