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I changed my LinkedIn avatar to include my toddler
- ngngngng 6y agoI deleted my Linkedin about a month ago and have also seen a sharp decline in recruiter interest.
- bJGVygG7MQVF8c 6y agoI'm so sorry. As a person with a LinkedIn account, I can't even imagine what your lived experience must be like. But please know that I'm open to learning.
- rcar 6y agoSeems a little presumptuous to assume that the decline in outreach was personal and not associated with the heavy decline in companies hiring during uncertain times.
- marcinzm 6y agoYeah, my linkedin recruiter messages dropped significantly especially for management roles and I changed nothing. I'd say the drop began 1-2 months after covid started and only began recovering now. Seems to lineup with when he did his test.
- pmiller2 6y ago> I was still getting tons of messages after covid and shelter in place started. My snapshot is from 2 months ago, not 4 months ago. Covid definitely caused some drop-off but not much tbh, I still got a ton of recruiters who are playing the long game. https://twitter.com/yipe/status/1278504924284772352 https://twitter.com/yipe/status/1278504924284772352
- MattGaiser 6y agoCovid lockdowns started 4 months ago. Companies took longer to react. Google only rescinded contractor offers end of May. My organization was hiring right through April. Things take time to propagate.
- pmiller2 6y agoI'm not sure whether I agree or disagree. I was just providing extra context from the Twitter poster, because Twitter is not good for context.
- MattGaiser 6y agoFair.
- MattGaiser 6y ago2 months ago was April/May. The stock market was crashing, layoffs were surging, and hiring freezes were everywhere. Absurd time to test this and declare the reason.
- pmiller2 6y agoThe market crash happened in mid March, and immediately started to recover. I don't think that had anything to do with it.
- asveikau 6y agoI haven't been looking but I am not under the impression that hiring has bounced back. Didn't I see articles saying some big cos had a hiring freeze for at least the rest of the year? And with the market flooded with big layoffs from businesses hit hard by lockdowns (Uber, Airbnb, probably others), whatever jobs are available probably have more competition than usual. Although perhaps enough time has passed so that the dust has settled for people affected.
- pmiller2 6y agoI don't really have a good sense of whether hiring has "bounced back" except based on the volume of LinkedIn messages I get, which seems to have remained about the same (I haven't actually gone and checked). But, it's not clear to me that, within the tech industry, enough people got laid off that it would have made hiring measurably more competitive.
- nsl73 6y agoNew unemployment claims are consistently dropping. The labor market isn’t as good as it was February, but it’s much better than it was in April.
- cortesoft 6y agoI think a lot of companies have really cut back on hiring, even if the market bounced back.
- 6y ago
- rudolph9 6y agoI have a cartoon penguin as my LinkedIn profile picture. I’ve considered changing it to an actual photo of me to appear less “unprofessional”. But, I never have and honestly I don’t think I ever will. Why do people need to see what I look like to consider giving me a job?
- pmiller2 6y agoI agree. My profile picture is not of me, either, but one of those generic "web avatar" thingies that kinda vaguely looks like me.
- readme 6y agobecause people are shallow, a really intelligent platform would include more important data, like smell you can't tell how bad someone smells until they come in for the interview, that's where zoom is lacking
- rudolph9 6y agoThis is a lacking feature. To much higher degree than appearance strong smell can inhibit other people’s work who are in close proximity at the office. I used to work with someone who had such terrible breath that I would go out of my way to avoid communicating with them in person.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- skeppy 6y agoAt least change it to a real penguin photo. It's the least you could do. With a cartoon, recruiters will know it's fake, but with a photo, there's a chance that an actual penguin will answer the phone.
- threeseed 6y agoIt really is insane to do this during COVID-19 where companies know that the US is on track for a second lockdown and thus slowing hiring. And doubly so around July which is EOFY and where hiring is massively impacted either side of this date. Also I am probably unique but I prefer keeping my work and home lives very seperate and wouldn't be that keen to work with someone who was so publicly looking to blur that boundary.
- moron4hire 6y agoJesus Christ, it's an avatar photo, not a public declaration you're going to be bringing the kids to the office every day.
- dkersten 6y agoSure, but it does suggest the person may have difficulty separating their personal and professional lives. Its not a strong indicator and it doesn’t mean they would be a bad hire at all, but I can see why it may be seen as a flag by some, rightly or wrongly.
- LandR 6y ago> Also I am probably unique but I prefer keeping my work and home lives very seperate and wouldn't be that keen to work with someone who was so publicly looking to blur that boundary. I don't understand what you mean here? You wouldn't want to work with someone who posts pictures of their children online? This seems crazy to me.
- threeseed 6y agoI would just be wary of someone who was using Linkedin, which is a professional social network, for posting photos of their children. When you're hiring someone all of the little details are amplified and things like this give you a window into their judgement.
- closeparen 6y ago>second lockdown I don’t remember the first lockdown subsiding in any meaningful way. Outdoor dining with household members, maybe? Seems like a marginal economic impact.
- walrus01 6y agoI'm honestly suspicious of anyone that posts photos of their young children on public social media. It shows poor judgment and security/privacy precautions. I think the point of this post was that they're trying to show that somebody who publicly demonstrates a commitment to their family, vs full time dedication to career, will be offered fewer senior roles. But I see it from a different perspective. How would you feel as a 14 or 16 year old teenager someday in the future knowing that your parents had posted hundreds, or possibly thousands of photos of you from birth up to early teenage years all over the internet with no privacy precautions whatsoever? I think at least some of us are fortunate enough to have grown up in the time period before widespread full-saturation use of camera phones, and parents who take pictures of literally everything and share it publicly as widely as possible.
- strombofulous 6y agoAlmost every parent and grandparent I know - even those who work in tech - post pictures of their (grand)kids to social media.
- mellosouls 6y agoThat doesn't make it a good thing.
- strombofulous 6y agoIt does mean that discriminating based on this would lower your candidate pool significantly, to the point where it's likely you will miss out on otherwise good candidates.
- moron4hire 6y agoProbably won't be bothered at all. Your face is publicly available information
- nine_k 6y agoPhotos of yourself at a younger age and in comical ("cute") situations may be quite embarrassing for your more grown-up self. Especially if people who know you but are not your friends would discover them and use them to publicly make fun of you. Such photos are not public by default, and should stay private to you and the circle of your friends and relatives.
- readme 6y agoWould you bring your kid to the job interview? Being able to separate your work and family life is important to productivity. It's not discrimination, it's that the author lacks professional boundaries.
- moron4hire 6y agoAn avatar photo on the world's shittiest Facebook clone is not "a lack of professional boundaries". Or do you scoff at coworkers who put up photos of their kids at their desk, too?
- Sebb767 6y agoLinkedIn is clearly aimed at the professional world and recruiters are arguably using it as a professional tool. Putting you child into your profile picture is more akin to bringing it to the interview.
- moron4hire 6y agoSez u
- bryanrasmussen 6y agoThis implies that recruiters set the order and people using a tool should oblige the recruiters. There are LinkedIn users who use it to just keep in contact with people they have worked with, don't accept recruiter contact requests and so forth (I am not one of those people, but I have seen their periodic articles on how they use LinkedIn, and also I know one guy who is basically like that - he has some recruiters but only the ones he actually worked with) At any rate dependent on your job putting your child into your profile picture might not be a problem for the normally understood parameters of that job, as for me it wouldn't affect my view of the person's suitability for any position I can think of but then I tend to be more on the lax spectrum of social requirements and etiquette.
- cortesoft 6y agoI think your username is going to be more of a challenge than the photo of your kid.
- moron4hire 6y agoSeeing a lot of, "if my employer wanted me to have a kid, they would have included it in my yearly bonus" going on in this thread.
- moron4hire 6y agoStartups should actively hire people with kids, because it's way too hard for them to leave the job when the startup invariably ends up treating them like shit.
- MattGaiser 6y agoWhy would it be harder? Software engineers generally have enough opportunities to leave with another offer in hand.
- moron4hire 6y agoDepending in where you are located, and how much time your kids take away from networking, that may not be the case.
- dkersten 6y agoOn the other hand, people with kids don’t have the time to work 120 hour weeks, sleep at the office and other BS like that.
- aaron695 6y agoUsing a kid as a prop to get jobs resulted in less job offers, suprise! And please stop publicly posting other people online. You don't have that moral right.
- 6510 6y agocausation is not correlation, something like that.
- deleted 6y ago[deleted]
- dan-robertson 6y agoA somewhat related story of someone who changed their CV from “Kim <lastname>” (also noting that they were married with children to imply stability) to “Mr Kim <lastname>”: https://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/how-i-discovered-gender-discrimination https://whatwouldkingleonidasdo.tumblr.com/post/54989171152/...
- cvhashim 6y agoInteresting. I’ve experienced similar despite being a black man. My name is pretty similar to a woman’s name. Recruiters are probably surprised to get a deep voice on the phone when they reach out to me. I’ve also been referred to as ‘miss’ or ‘she/her’ on emails several times until I clarify I’m a man :P
- loraa 6y agoSlow clap?
- noodlenotes 6y agoChange my view: it's unprofessional to have a group photo (2 or more people) as your LinkedIn avatar. Doesn't matter if the other person is your kid, SO, friend, or coworker. There's exceptions if you're the focus of the photo and other people are in the background, especially in a professional setting or if the photo represents a professional accomplishment. If my LinkedIn avatar is me and my friends hanging out, it doesn't communicate that I value work-life balance, it means I don't pick up on social norms.
- cjcenizal 6y agoThat’s certainly a valid interpretation, but it’s not everyone’s interpretation. Someone could post that picture with different intentions and be a potentially stellar coworker. So you’re welcome to your worldview of course, I‘d just suggest being careful about judging everyone according to it — otherwise you’re guaranteed to make miscalculations.
- m463 6y agoYou could make the argument that it is marketing. I suspect it might filter out specific job offers - it would be interesting to know the offers that are left.
- filoleg 6y agoWhatever works, works. I stopped caring about LinkedIn a while ago, so I just switched my profile pic to a pic of me shooting a flamethrower with a hawaiian shirt on about a year ago. Results: interest from recruiters didn't drop at all, in fact, it increased (though I do not attribute it to the pic). However, a few recruiters specifically mentioned that they thought the pic was cool, and that alone was worth it. Also, it isn't just recruiters from "hip tech startups" responding positively to it. I got hit up since then by a bunch of different places, including the usual FAANG, finance companies (Citadel/Two Sigma/etc.), tech startups, etc. No one seems to have an issue with the profile pic, and I like it, so why not. And no, it wasn't intended as a humblebrag, a lot of people I know get hit up by recruiters in the same way, despite them having pretty standard pictures and not being some coding superstars. And I am not one either.
- jerome-jh 6y agoSo kids are supposed to hamper productivity? Twitter and LinkedIn are productivity killers, both at home AND at the office contrary to kids. Plus well behaved kids can typically leave you alone for a 1-3 hours. People active on Twitter, LinkedIn, etc can barely have 5 minutes of sustained focus.
- Markoff 6y agoSo basically he is just showing he has zero interest in privacy, if he doesn't care about privacy of his own children.