LinkedIn has its advantages and disadvantages. I would characterise it as a net positive for me, but it depends who you are, how you use it and what for. Why n

LinkedIn has its advantages and disadvantages. I would characterise it as a net positive for me, but it depends who you are, how you use it and what for. Why net positive? For my second start-up, I found our first customer through LinkedIn. After lots of attempts to source a paying customer that led to no conversions, one day a message arrived saying "You're the only ones in Europe doing this. We want to work with you.". No networking, no clever lead generation, just being there being found in a search did the job. Never used it for jobs because I got these all conference networking and by personal email exchances or being headhunted. It also gave me lots of speaking engagements. Recently, LinkedIn has had some issues with too much Facebook-like noise (people posting non-professional content), so I think if there was a more focused, mininmalist alternative, lots of people may switch. There is also the question of potential conflict of interest: LI sells to HR/Hiring functions and to people that already work for companies that use it for these functions. So if I was you, I wouldn't apply via LI to any kind of job in case you'd like to keep that fact from your current employer's HR.