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LinkedIn has become basically a requirement for applying for many jobs making it one of the hardest public profiles for the privacy conscious to hide from Googl

LinkedIn has become basically a requirement for applying for many jobs making it one of the hardest public profiles for the privacy conscious to hide from Google. I have a pretty common name, which is normally a good anonymity cloak, but if you also know my profession then my Linkedin profile pops up as the first Google result revealing many accurate personal details about me.

akersten 6y ago
Is it really that popular nowadays? I remember it feeling like it was an antiquated platform 6 or 7 years ago before my latest job, and in my head I now imagine it as a MySpace-like dinosaur website. Has it made a resurgence? I might just be ignorant.
- majormajor 6y ago
  It's hard for me to remember a software dev candidate I've interviewed in the past three or four years who didn't have a LinkedIn profile. Like one out of several dozens, maybe. This could point at an earlier step in the pipeline - e.g. the recruiters at those companies may have been using LinkedIn as a primary search tool - but that's a signal of its own.
  - sigfubar 6y ago
    LinkedIn is for those who don’t have a GitHub. My work speaks for itself; if it’s somehow not enough, the company isn’t worth my time anyway.
    - verdverm 6y ago
      You're missing out on a lot of opportunities by not giving LI consideration. A lot of good companies use it, GitHub is also important for developers. However, you can double your income by thinking differently about LI. If that doesn't speak to its value as a network, I might need to reassess what network value means.
      - greggyb 6y ago
        > However, you can double your income by thinking differently about LI. How? I would love to double my income.
        verdverm 6y ago
        1. having a really well written profile, hire an expert 2. less LI, but become a thought leader 3. Network, write, promote. People are more likely do business with people they "know" so make sure they see your face on a regular basis. 4. Sales skills and business acumen, you will need this if you want to break out of the average
        greggyb 6y ago
        1. Never did spend more than a few minutes at a time, but have recruiters reaching out on the regular. 2. This is not a LinkedIn skill. I speak at industry conferences regularly through relationships I've built entirely outside of LinkedIn. 3. Conference speaking does this for me. 4. This isn't even tangentially relayed to LinkedIn. My first job out of college was from a bunch of cold applications. Since then, I've gotten all my roles by reaching out to people (outside of LinkedIn) to connect, and through my network. The skills you highlight as important are not exclusive to, or necessarily learnable on LinkedIn.
        verdverm 6y ago
        Yes, my point is that LinkedIn is part of an overall strategy. The best way to use recruiters is to give them a few minutes regardless of the job, they have more, it's their business, and they will start pimping you out. Best job search hack ever! I'm doing a few extra steps now 1. Tell them the company salaries are far too low, take a sample point back, hopefully a hack that raises everyone's salary 2. Getting intros to companies I want to do business with, not go work for. This has not been fruitful, but it is a recent strategy change
        sgerenser 6y ago
        My current compensation is more than 4x what it was at my first job out of college 14 years ago. It would have been difficult to pull that off without getting in touch with recruiters at major tech companies on LinkedIn. I did not have an expert write my profile and in fact I’ve hardly touched it in years.
    - rsynnott 6y ago
      Most employees will want to know your work background, though many will be perfectly happy with a html or pdf CV.
    - blaser-waffle 6y ago
      Github is great at showing your individual ability, on projects that you're working on yourself and/or ones that you want to showcase. What happens when you have do code features that you won't want to do? No one puts their dogshit, get-it-done-before-the-weekend code on github. And it's useless for telling me how well you'll do on a team, how you'll interact with other stakeholders, if you're sketchy and will run off with our IP (or just sell creds on the darknet), and if you'll be able to handle high powered office/project politics and their pressures. Linkedin may not be a perfect (or even good) signal for that, but it's a start. Long work histories but no contacts on Linkedin? Okay, not a dealbreaker, but may be worthy of an explanation.
- sillysaurusx 6y ago
  If you're ignorant, than so am I. My linkedin is horribly out of date (like, a decade out of date) and it hasn't seemed to matter one bit.
  - saagarjha 6y ago
    Of course, it's difficult to a/b test that…
- bosswipe 6y ago
  The reason employers love LinkedIn is that it makes it a lot harder to lie about your work history since it links all your companies and coworkers. In a way it serves a similar function to credit reporting bureaus in providing an accurate background check. This is also why cops love it.
  - rileyt 6y ago
    This is a good point. It also one of the many reasons why it's a privacy nightmare.
  - tomc1985 6y ago
    Terrorists too. I've read about ISIS using it to learn more about people they kidnapped
- centimeter 6y ago
  I deleted my linkedin a few years ago. I only ever got cold-calls for shitty jobs that I obviously wouldn't be interested in. Every interesting cold call I've gotten has come from elsewhere (e.g. my blog). Not having a linkedin has, I think, never impeded my ability to get an interview or a job offer. If your resume is otherwise very weak it might be somewhat useful, but honestly if someone is relying heavily on linkedin in their resume, I'd view that as a pretty bad sign.
- Nginx487 6y ago
  LinkedIn is a must-have if you are an independent consultant, author or product owner. This is a primary platform to promote your product/book/blog and create the community around it. However, regular employee also can benefit from well-composed cv and creating connections. I use it on a daily basis as my only social network
  - AlchemistCamp 6y ago
    Interesting. I have a product which is basically a blog + YT channel full of Elixir tutorials and I recently decided to delete my LinkedIn profile. I could reverse that, though since they put a 45 day waiting period on deleting it. How would I use LI as a "primary platform" to promote my service or build a community around it?
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
RandallBrown 6y ago
Which jobs require a LinkedIn profile? I've never had one and never been asked about it. I have gotten lots of recruiter emails saying they saw my LinkedIn profile, which is kinda funny, since it doesn't exist. Could just be the kinds of jobs I'm interested in.
- peterkos 6y ago
  As a student its one of those things that you can't risk not having on your résumé. There's always one recruiter or one document-scraping application portal that could reject it. Plus every career counselor I've seen has suggested it. I personally think that for software dev at least, making connections via Twitter or via friends is a better way to go for the first internship, but everyone has different paths to success :)
  - lucasmullens 6y ago
    FWIW, I've seen quite a few resumes of software engineers at this point and I would say less than half have LinkedIn on it. "Can't risk" is interesting, you could say that about anything you could put on your resume if there's a chance it helps, but something like LinkedIn seems just redundant with your resume's content.
    - jwagenet 6y ago
      When you are desperate looking for your first job or internship you probably don’t have a great grasp of the hiring process because of conflicting voices on how to get a job. Even if technical forums say don’t bother, career counselors and hr folks seem to place importance on LinkedIn, leading to the “can’t risk” attitude, especially if you don’t have a foot in the door.
    - mywittyname 6y ago
      I don't list my LinkedIn profile on my resume, but I have one and it's under the name used on my resume. Every time I've applied for a job, LI shows n people from $place_I_applied_to has viewed your profile recently. So people definitely use it, even if it isn't on your resume.
pmiller2 6y ago
Which details are you concerned about? I'm in much the same situation with a common name, but I don't see anything I'm concerned about the whole world knowing on there. You get the schools I went to, the jobs I've had, and my general physical location, but not much else. I'd be leaking as much or more information if I just put a resume up on a personal website.
- rileyt 6y ago
  It's the same information, but if you put it on your personal site, it would be less likely to be included in mass data sharing/scraping with people you might not want the info shared with.
raz32dust 6y ago
You can adjust your public profile to only expose the minimal details and have the recruiter connect to you for anything more. I agree it would be great if LinkedIn had a way to have a purely private profile that is only shared on demand, viewable with a key or something for a restricted period. But yeah, it does not solve the problem of social pressure where you could be considered as less reliable or trustworthy if you don't have a public profile with many details.
- mywittyname 6y ago
  They probably sell tons of information to law enforcement. That seems to be a lucrative revenue stream for information companies.
rileyt 6y ago
In what way is it required? What specifically are they looking for?
ardy42 6y ago
> LinkedIn has become basically a requirement for applying for many jobs making it one of the hardest public profiles for the privacy conscious to hide from Google. Isn't it pretty easy to hide from Google? It's had settings like "don't let search engines index my profile" and "only show to people with an n-degree relationship" for a long time.

akersten 6y ago

Is it really that popular nowadays? I remember it feeling like it was an antiquated platform 6 or 7 years ago before my latest job, and in my head I now imagine it as a MySpace-like dinosaur website. Has it made a resurgence? I might just be ignorant.

majormajor 6y ago
It's hard for me to remember a software dev candidate I've interviewed in the past three or four years who didn't have a LinkedIn profile. Like one out of several dozens, maybe. This could point at an earlier step in the pipeline - e.g. the recruiters at those companies may have been using LinkedIn as a primary search tool - but that's a signal of its own.
- sigfubar 6y ago
  LinkedIn is for those who don’t have a GitHub. My work speaks for itself; if it’s somehow not enough, the company isn’t worth my time anyway.
  - verdverm 6y ago
    You're missing out on a lot of opportunities by not giving LI consideration. A lot of good companies use it, GitHub is also important for developers. However, you can double your income by thinking differently about LI. If that doesn't speak to its value as a network, I might need to reassess what network value means.
    - greggyb 6y ago
      > However, you can double your income by thinking differently about LI. How? I would love to double my income.
      - verdverm 6y ago
        1. having a really well written profile, hire an expert 2. less LI, but become a thought leader 3. Network, write, promote. People are more likely do business with people they "know" so make sure they see your face on a regular basis. 4. Sales skills and business acumen, you will need this if you want to break out of the average
        greggyb 6y ago
        1. Never did spend more than a few minutes at a time, but have recruiters reaching out on the regular. 2. This is not a LinkedIn skill. I speak at industry conferences regularly through relationships I've built entirely outside of LinkedIn. 3. Conference speaking does this for me. 4. This isn't even tangentially relayed to LinkedIn. My first job out of college was from a bunch of cold applications. Since then, I've gotten all my roles by reaching out to people (outside of LinkedIn) to connect, and through my network. The skills you highlight as important are not exclusive to, or necessarily learnable on LinkedIn.
        verdverm 6y ago
        Yes, my point is that LinkedIn is part of an overall strategy. The best way to use recruiters is to give them a few minutes regardless of the job, they have more, it's their business, and they will start pimping you out. Best job search hack ever! I'm doing a few extra steps now 1. Tell them the company salaries are far too low, take a sample point back, hopefully a hack that raises everyone's salary 2. Getting intros to companies I want to do business with, not go work for. This has not been fruitful, but it is a recent strategy change
      - sgerenser 6y ago
        My current compensation is more than 4x what it was at my first job out of college 14 years ago. It would have been difficult to pull that off without getting in touch with recruiters at major tech companies on LinkedIn. I did not have an expert write my profile and in fact I’ve hardly touched it in years.
  - rsynnott 6y ago
    Most employees will want to know your work background, though many will be perfectly happy with a html or pdf CV.
  - blaser-waffle 6y ago
    Github is great at showing your individual ability, on projects that you're working on yourself and/or ones that you want to showcase. What happens when you have do code features that you won't want to do? No one puts their dogshit, get-it-done-before-the-weekend code on github. And it's useless for telling me how well you'll do on a team, how you'll interact with other stakeholders, if you're sketchy and will run off with our IP (or just sell creds on the darknet), and if you'll be able to handle high powered office/project politics and their pressures. Linkedin may not be a perfect (or even good) signal for that, but it's a start. Long work histories but no contacts on Linkedin? Okay, not a dealbreaker, but may be worthy of an explanation.
sillysaurusx 6y ago
If you're ignorant, than so am I. My linkedin is horribly out of date (like, a decade out of date) and it hasn't seemed to matter one bit.
- saagarjha 6y ago
  Of course, it's difficult to a/b test that…
bosswipe 6y ago
The reason employers love LinkedIn is that it makes it a lot harder to lie about your work history since it links all your companies and coworkers. In a way it serves a similar function to credit reporting bureaus in providing an accurate background check. This is also why cops love it.
- rileyt 6y ago
  This is a good point. It also one of the many reasons why it's a privacy nightmare.
- tomc1985 6y ago
  Terrorists too. I've read about ISIS using it to learn more about people they kidnapped
centimeter 6y ago
I deleted my linkedin a few years ago. I only ever got cold-calls for shitty jobs that I obviously wouldn't be interested in. Every interesting cold call I've gotten has come from elsewhere (e.g. my blog). Not having a linkedin has, I think, never impeded my ability to get an interview or a job offer. If your resume is otherwise very weak it might be somewhat useful, but honestly if someone is relying heavily on linkedin in their resume, I'd view that as a pretty bad sign.
Nginx487 6y ago
LinkedIn is a must-have if you are an independent consultant, author or product owner. This is a primary platform to promote your product/book/blog and create the community around it. However, regular employee also can benefit from well-composed cv and creating connections. I use it on a daily basis as my only social network
- AlchemistCamp 6y ago
  Interesting. I have a product which is basically a blog + YT channel full of Elixir tutorials and I recently decided to delete my LinkedIn profile. I could reverse that, though since they put a 45 day waiting period on deleting it. How would I use LI as a "primary platform" to promote my service or build a community around it?
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]

RandallBrown 6y ago

Which jobs require a LinkedIn profile? I've never had one and never been asked about it. I have gotten lots of recruiter emails saying they saw my LinkedIn profile, which is kinda funny, since it doesn't exist. Could just be the kinds of jobs I'm interested in.

peterkos 6y ago
As a student its one of those things that you can't risk not having on your résumé. There's always one recruiter or one document-scraping application portal that could reject it. Plus every career counselor I've seen has suggested it. I personally think that for software dev at least, making connections via Twitter or via friends is a better way to go for the first internship, but everyone has different paths to success :)
- lucasmullens 6y ago
  FWIW, I've seen quite a few resumes of software engineers at this point and I would say less than half have LinkedIn on it. "Can't risk" is interesting, you could say that about anything you could put on your resume if there's a chance it helps, but something like LinkedIn seems just redundant with your resume's content.
  - jwagenet 6y ago
    When you are desperate looking for your first job or internship you probably don’t have a great grasp of the hiring process because of conflicting voices on how to get a job. Even if technical forums say don’t bother, career counselors and hr folks seem to place importance on LinkedIn, leading to the “can’t risk” attitude, especially if you don’t have a foot in the door.
  - mywittyname 6y ago
    I don't list my LinkedIn profile on my resume, but I have one and it's under the name used on my resume. Every time I've applied for a job, LI shows n people from $place_I_applied_to has viewed your profile recently. So people definitely use it, even if it isn't on your resume.

pmiller2 6y ago

Which details are you concerned about? I'm in much the same situation with a common name, but I don't see anything I'm concerned about the whole world knowing on there. You get the schools I went to, the jobs I've had, and my general physical location, but not much else. I'd be leaking as much or more information if I just put a resume up on a personal website.

rileyt 6y ago
It's the same information, but if you put it on your personal site, it would be less likely to be included in mass data sharing/scraping with people you might not want the info shared with.

raz32dust 6y ago

You can adjust your public profile to only expose the minimal details and have the recruiter connect to you for anything more. I agree it would be great if LinkedIn had a way to have a purely private profile that is only shared on demand, viewable with a key or something for a restricted period. But yeah, it does not solve the problem of social pressure where you could be considered as less reliable or trustworthy if you don't have a public profile with many details.

mywittyname 6y ago
They probably sell tons of information to law enforcement. That seems to be a lucrative revenue stream for information companies.

rileyt 6y ago

In what way is it required? What specifically are they looking for?

ardy42 6y ago

> LinkedIn has become basically a requirement for applying for many jobs making it one of the hardest public profiles for the privacy conscious to hide from Google. Isn't it pretty easy to hide from Google? It's had settings like "don't let search engines index my profile" and "only show to people with an n-degree relationship" for a long time.