I have never had a LinkedIn account, both out of general anti-data-vacuuming-social-media, and specifically anti-whatever-the-fucking-corphead-psychos-are-doing-on-LinkedIn tendencies, and managed to find a decent job out of uni just fine (software field). I’m now looking for a job again and the number one piece of advice I’m being given by concerned parties is “get on LinkedIn”.
I’m curious how many people into the whole “privacy” thing have had to make this choice, and which way you went with it.
Do the advantages (which it seems mainly boil down to “networking”) outweigh the icky feeling I’d get making an account? Of course only I can actually answer that question, but it sums up my conundrum.
I do, but just because of my job. Everytime I’ve needed/wanted to start searching, LinkedIn’s where all of my jobs (previous and current) have come from. It’s the only account I’ve got left with my real name on it, so I’d get rid of it if I could but I don’t know how long I have before I need to start searching for a new job, so I just leave it there unused. The platform itself sucks and is full of circle-jerking and “self-made” people bragging, so I don’t engage with it at all other than for job seeking purposes. Also, I’m in IT so my experience with the platform is very particular to my field. Not everyone has good results with LinkedIn.
linkedin has never been useful for me, but i keep it around for this same reason.
however i wonder about it’s effectiveness because i have similar profiles setup on all of the other job sites like indeed, monster, echo, etc and not a single one has yielded any leads at all since 2021.
it makes me question if having it there is doing anything at all.