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For me, like many I'm sure, it turned recruitment completely on it's head. Previously I would spend hours trawling job boards, composing cover letters and get

For me, like many I'm sure, it turned recruitment completely on it's head. Previously I would spend hours trawling job boards, composing cover letters and get excited at the prospect of one successful reply. It was soul destroying. Now I can construct a post, complete with trendy hashtags, and passively watch _hundreds_ of recruiters reach out to me in 24hrs. Now I can sit with a coffee and easy filter out the crap. It's taken some time to build up the 8,000+ contacts, mostly of senior tech people amd recruiters. Every job in the last 5yrs has been through LinkedIn and due to the ease by which I could change jobs, salary has sky rocketed too. Maybe I am in the minority of people who use it as a tool this way? Edit: I also have an emoji as the first "letter" in the string of my first name. This instantly allows me to visually/programmatically filter out genuine "human" messages from bots. I also reply to these messages, as let's be honest, a human took time to compose the message to me. A quick "thank you" (one button click!) goes a long way.

nynx 6y ago
That's incredible! Do you have any advice for how to build a network like that?
- webmaven 6y ago
  It's fairly simple: Find people you would like to connect to, find their email address, send a request. It helps if you have a "weak ties" connection to them, even if you don't really know them: you may be connected via someone else (in which case, asking for an introduction will almost certainly work), you may both be alumni of an org or institution, you may both have attended the same event (this works in a sort of 'missed connections' fashion), and so on. One somewhat counterintuitive tip: you don't need to connect to a lot of hyper-connected folks, probably just one or two that are actually in your industry. Intros through indiscriminate folks like that tend to be disregarded unless there is a highly targeted ask simply because most of the folks they are connected to don't actually have an existing relationship or particular affinity with them. Similarly, so called "LinkedIn Open Networkers" that accept all incoming connection requests are also something of a red flag, unless you are actually in an industry like recruiting, marketing, or PR, where a 'reach' numbers game is a viable strategy. Once your network starts growing, you'll start to get more incoming requests from folks trying to do the same thing you are. Don't accept the ones that don't make any sense (eg. If you are a medical software dev in the Midwest, feel free to decline that random connection request from an accountant in Azerbaijan), or you'll start to get a lot more of those (because folks who connect to lots of random folks tend to be mostly connected to others who do the exact same thing). Absolutely reject and report requests that are outright spam. If you aren't sure, you can reply to ask what led them to try and connect with you before you make the decision to accept ignore or reject the request (saying "Hi, thanks for reaching out. I'm sorry, but I have a terrible memory, and I don't recognize your name or profile image. Did we meet at an event last year?" will work without being insulting). It all boils down to this: if you want to have a large but high quality/relevance network, you need to be prolific but not indiscriminate in making connection requests.
polishdude20 6y ago
What sort of posts are you writing that get recruiters to come to you in the post? I feel like all the posts I see are just people going in like vultures to raw meat trying to get some scrap
- comprev 6y ago
  Social media hashtags exist for people to follow. By finding out the current trendy hashtags that recruiters themselves use/follow, your post pops up on their feed.
  - jcims 6y ago
    Do you ever talk to your peers about this? I get grossed out by this kind of behavior generally because it seems so artificial and narcissistic. Hearing your perspective is interesting because it at least adds the nuance of gamesmanship to the list. Have you ever tried declaring yourself a thought leader? What kind of mileage does that get you?
    - generalk 6y ago
      I've begun doing recruitment in a professional capacity recently, after having been the type of dev that dismissed this kind of social media, LinkedIn hashtag feed nonsense for the same reasons you do. And I still don't love it, but I have to admit it's got a place in the strategy. Posting a job req with some focused hashtags seems to help get more responses. Posting a few industry-appropriate articles does seem to help keep our company in folks' minds. In an ideal world every company I work for will be so amazing and so well known that I don't have to sell it to folks because the right folks are coming straight to us. Or that all of my friends and all of their friends will magically be capable of switching jobs to come build a new team with me whenever I need to grow. But reality doesn't work like that, and so things like LinkedIn end up being table stakes. It isn't the whole of my recruitment strategy, but certainly it's a functional part.
    - rch 6y ago
      > thought leader It's a negative signal. Go build something instead.
reidrac 6y ago
The link to your LinkedIn in your HN profile is broken.
- comprev 6y ago
  I checked and it worked ok for me? Perhaps HN didn't like the colon after LinkedIn. Thanks anyway
  - reidrac 6y ago
    It seems to work now. It couldn't find an unique profile, or something like that. Probably a LinkedIn glitch.
  - Lucasoato 6y ago
    Just checked and didn't work for me either :/
    - comprev 6y ago
      A handful of HN people have found me via the link so I don't know what is going on. I'll ask LI to restart their computer.
      - Lucasoato 6y ago
        "An exact match for alifay could not be found. The LinkedIn profile you’re looking for isn’t public or doesn’t exist." Maybe only people who are connected to people already connected to you can find you, or the profile is private.
        comprev 6y ago
        I disabled private mode now. That might explain the glitches of me not being found.
- frereubu 6y ago
  Same for me.
paul7986 6y ago
Past ten years or so ive gotten most of my jobs via recruiters reaching out to me on LinkedIn. I always enjoy seeing how much the market will bear when answering them with I'm making $400k(just a number) now what is this web developer position offering? Meaning I bump my salary to see what the market will bear .. if i didnt go too high they will go higher and I boosted my salary by double or more. This trick is best though when your a junior to mid level developer ... salaries do cap out Ive noticed. But, it's always fun to see what you might be able to get. I use to see a lot of HN readers complain about recruiters. Some are overzealous and shady like I told one recruiter i just met this girl two weeks ago at web dev Meetup who just started at same company. He hunted her down and kept leaving voicemails on her work phone & then calling the receptionist when she didnt answer him(omg lol). Another forced me to lie to owner of company they placed me at, which I very begrudgingly did(hide recruiters shady business practice). Though I sold her and her company out once she threaten to make up false stories so he wouldnt hire me full-time(he did hire me). Though out of ten years and dealing with 100 to possibly 100s of recruiters those two are outliers in my experience.
EugeneOZ 6y ago
I often copy-paste names to avoid typos and to don't insult people unintentionally, so your idea about emoji-filter is not perfect :)
- apexalpha 6y ago
  If you would manually copy the name you would leave out the emoji, a script won't.
  - DeusExMachina 6y ago
    That's until the behavior becomes pervasive enough that scripts start stripping emojis from names.
    - nitrogen 6y ago
      Are there any places that allow emoji on birth certificates?
- Kiro 6y ago
  The name has an actual emoji (a stormy cloud, the link is in his profile) in front of it, not an emoji that looks like a letter or something like that.
  - EugeneOZ 6y ago
    Thanks, I misunderstood the idea.
QuesnayJr 6y ago
I know someone who had trouble finding a job for a couple of years after taking time off to have children. Right before covid hit she took a class on using LinkedIn to find a job. Initially she was going to wait until covid was over, but circumstances forced her to start looking right in the middle of the first covid wave. She applied what she learned from the LinkedIn class, and had a job within two weeks.
- vsskanth 6y ago
  If you don't mind, could you share the name of the course ?
  - QuesnayJr 6y ago
    It was a face-to-face course, not something online. It also wasn't really something formal -- someone paid a recruiter to give a lecture on it.
    - vsskanth 6y ago
      Oh, bummer. Thanks for the response.
bob33212 6y ago
"Filtering through the crap" is a skill that many reading your post may not have. There are a ton of companies who use recruiters because they have shitty jobs. So the recruiters make the job sound much better than it is.
trungdq88 6y ago
Thanks for the emoji filtering trick, I'll consider start using it on my GitHub :)
TheRealDunkirk 6y ago
> Every job in the last 5yrs How many jobs have you HAD in the past 5 years?
- n0mad01 6y ago
  some consider jobhopping as a hobby with benefits.
  - siliconmountain 6y ago
    An unwise hobby. I know recruiters and hiring managers that see low tenure jobhopping as a red flag
    - analog31 6y ago
      This may just be to discourage you from doing it. I've been on a number of hiring committees, and job hopping was never discussed as a negative. By the time you've been on the job for 1.5 years, chances are the hiring manager and recruiter have both moved on.
      - emteycz 6y ago
        Also, I'm hired to do a job. Around 1-2 year long job. I finish it and move on to what excites me next. My best hiring/HR managers and recruiters understand this, it makes our cooperation a bliss.
      - ViViDboarder 6y ago
        Personally I consider it a yellow flag when hiring. It could be a sign that they are likely to hop to the next thing and not worth investing in, or it could just be that they are looking for the right place to settle in. I will generally ask about their experiences and what they are looking for to try to discern which camp they may be in. As with all hiring though, this is far from perfect.
        deleted 6y ago
np_tedious 6y ago
I've never made a post, but I do think I've experienced some of these benefits. Then again I've also become a more attractive job candidate. Tough to separate these things
mannymanman 6y ago
Do you make a post looking for a job while you're still working at another company? Wouldn't this raise red flags at your existing workplace? I've been told that it's a good idea to look for your next job while you're already working somewhere else, and I'm curious how the 'writing posts' strategy would hold up in this situation. +1 to the hundreds of views that posts get. LinkedIn is insane that way.
- runeks 6y ago
  > Do you make a post looking for a job while you're still working at another company? Wouldn't this raise red flags at your existing workplace? I’m not OP, but as I read it OP just makes a post saying e.g. “my experience with #cryptocurrency and #blockchain combined with #ai on #iot devices has taught me...” etc. In other words, not a text that says “I’m looking for a job”, but just something that reveals areas of expertise.
  - frongpik 6y ago
    The number one rule of a good salesman is to not look like a salesman. IIRC, it's from the Thiel's book.
AtlasBarfed 6y ago
While that seems great, it's still a recruiter enablement platform where almost all opportunities will be vampired in the bill rate or salary by commissions. The fact that linkedin can't provide direct-to-company recruiting and opportunity research shows the platform is largely a failure.
- Ancalagon 6y ago
  Why would linkedIn want to do that? They'd then be losing out on a serious source of profits
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
indymike 6y ago
LinkedIn has been a huge win for job seekers and employers alike. The rest of it is quite strange largely because LinkedIn is trying to deal with users who appear for a job search, get something, go dormant for a few years, rinse & repeat.
maest 6y ago
This only works in tech, as it is a seller's market. The situation is very different if you're looking for a non-tech job.
- alborzb 6y ago
  Not at all. From my experience (consulting/marketing/advertising/finance), its the same in most professional fields... Job hopping can be a great way to advance your career and your salary.

nynx 6y ago

That's incredible! Do you have any advice for how to build a network like that?

webmaven 6y ago
It's fairly simple: Find people you would like to connect to, find their email address, send a request. It helps if you have a "weak ties" connection to them, even if you don't really know them: you may be connected via someone else (in which case, asking for an introduction will almost certainly work), you may both be alumni of an org or institution, you may both have attended the same event (this works in a sort of 'missed connections' fashion), and so on. One somewhat counterintuitive tip: you don't need to connect to a lot of hyper-connected folks, probably just one or two that are actually in your industry. Intros through indiscriminate folks like that tend to be disregarded unless there is a highly targeted ask simply because most of the folks they are connected to don't actually have an existing relationship or particular affinity with them. Similarly, so called "LinkedIn Open Networkers" that accept all incoming connection requests are also something of a red flag, unless you are actually in an industry like recruiting, marketing, or PR, where a 'reach' numbers game is a viable strategy. Once your network starts growing, you'll start to get more incoming requests from folks trying to do the same thing you are. Don't accept the ones that don't make any sense (eg. If you are a medical software dev in the Midwest, feel free to decline that random connection request from an accountant in Azerbaijan), or you'll start to get a lot more of those (because folks who connect to lots of random folks tend to be mostly connected to others who do the exact same thing). Absolutely reject and report requests that are outright spam. If you aren't sure, you can reply to ask what led them to try and connect with you before you make the decision to accept ignore or reject the request (saying "Hi, thanks for reaching out. I'm sorry, but I have a terrible memory, and I don't recognize your name or profile image. Did we meet at an event last year?" will work without being insulting). It all boils down to this: if you want to have a large but high quality/relevance network, you need to be prolific but not indiscriminate in making connection requests.

polishdude20 6y ago

What sort of posts are you writing that get recruiters to come to you in the post? I feel like all the posts I see are just people going in like vultures to raw meat trying to get some scrap

comprev 6y ago
Social media hashtags exist for people to follow. By finding out the current trendy hashtags that recruiters themselves use/follow, your post pops up on their feed.
- jcims 6y ago
  Do you ever talk to your peers about this? I get grossed out by this kind of behavior generally because it seems so artificial and narcissistic. Hearing your perspective is interesting because it at least adds the nuance of gamesmanship to the list. Have you ever tried declaring yourself a thought leader? What kind of mileage does that get you?
  - generalk 6y ago
    I've begun doing recruitment in a professional capacity recently, after having been the type of dev that dismissed this kind of social media, LinkedIn hashtag feed nonsense for the same reasons you do. And I still don't love it, but I have to admit it's got a place in the strategy. Posting a job req with some focused hashtags seems to help get more responses. Posting a few industry-appropriate articles does seem to help keep our company in folks' minds. In an ideal world every company I work for will be so amazing and so well known that I don't have to sell it to folks because the right folks are coming straight to us. Or that all of my friends and all of their friends will magically be capable of switching jobs to come build a new team with me whenever I need to grow. But reality doesn't work like that, and so things like LinkedIn end up being table stakes. It isn't the whole of my recruitment strategy, but certainly it's a functional part.
  - rch 6y ago
    > thought leader It's a negative signal. Go build something instead.

reidrac 6y ago

The link to your LinkedIn in your HN profile is broken.

comprev 6y ago
I checked and it worked ok for me? Perhaps HN didn't like the colon after LinkedIn. Thanks anyway
- reidrac 6y ago
  It seems to work now. It couldn't find an unique profile, or something like that. Probably a LinkedIn glitch.
- Lucasoato 6y ago
  Just checked and didn't work for me either :/
  - comprev 6y ago
    A handful of HN people have found me via the link so I don't know what is going on. I'll ask LI to restart their computer.
    - Lucasoato 6y ago
      "An exact match for alifay could not be found. The LinkedIn profile you’re looking for isn’t public or doesn’t exist." Maybe only people who are connected to people already connected to you can find you, or the profile is private.
      - comprev 6y ago
        I disabled private mode now. That might explain the glitches of me not being found.
frereubu 6y ago
Same for me.

paul7986 6y ago

Past ten years or so ive gotten most of my jobs via recruiters reaching out to me on LinkedIn. I always enjoy seeing how much the market will bear when answering them with I'm making $400k(just a number) now what is this web developer position offering? Meaning I bump my salary to see what the market will bear .. if i didnt go too high they will go higher and I boosted my salary by double or more. This trick is best though when your a junior to mid level developer ... salaries do cap out Ive noticed. But, it's always fun to see what you might be able to get. I use to see a lot of HN readers complain about recruiters. Some are overzealous and shady like I told one recruiter i just met this girl two weeks ago at web dev Meetup who just started at same company. He hunted her down and kept leaving voicemails on her work phone & then calling the receptionist when she didnt answer him(omg lol). Another forced me to lie to owner of company they placed me at, which I very begrudgingly did(hide recruiters shady business practice). Though I sold her and her company out once she threaten to make up false stories so he wouldnt hire me full-time(he did hire me). Though out of ten years and dealing with 100 to possibly 100s of recruiters those two are outliers in my experience.

EugeneOZ 6y ago

I often copy-paste names to avoid typos and to don't insult people unintentionally, so your idea about emoji-filter is not perfect :)

apexalpha 6y ago
If you would manually copy the name you would leave out the emoji, a script won't.
- DeusExMachina 6y ago
  That's until the behavior becomes pervasive enough that scripts start stripping emojis from names.
  - nitrogen 6y ago
    Are there any places that allow emoji on birth certificates?
Kiro 6y ago
The name has an actual emoji (a stormy cloud, the link is in his profile) in front of it, not an emoji that looks like a letter or something like that.
- EugeneOZ 6y ago
  Thanks, I misunderstood the idea.

QuesnayJr 6y ago

I know someone who had trouble finding a job for a couple of years after taking time off to have children. Right before covid hit she took a class on using LinkedIn to find a job. Initially she was going to wait until covid was over, but circumstances forced her to start looking right in the middle of the first covid wave. She applied what she learned from the LinkedIn class, and had a job within two weeks.

vsskanth 6y ago
If you don't mind, could you share the name of the course ?
- QuesnayJr 6y ago
  It was a face-to-face course, not something online. It also wasn't really something formal -- someone paid a recruiter to give a lecture on it.
  - vsskanth 6y ago
    Oh, bummer. Thanks for the response.

bob33212 6y ago

"Filtering through the crap" is a skill that many reading your post may not have. There are a ton of companies who use recruiters because they have shitty jobs. So the recruiters make the job sound much better than it is.

trungdq88 6y ago

Thanks for the emoji filtering trick, I'll consider start using it on my GitHub :)

TheRealDunkirk 6y ago

> Every job in the last 5yrs How many jobs have you HAD in the past 5 years?

n0mad01 6y ago
some consider jobhopping as a hobby with benefits.
- siliconmountain 6y ago
  An unwise hobby. I know recruiters and hiring managers that see low tenure jobhopping as a red flag
  - analog31 6y ago
    This may just be to discourage you from doing it. I've been on a number of hiring committees, and job hopping was never discussed as a negative. By the time you've been on the job for 1.5 years, chances are the hiring manager and recruiter have both moved on.
    - emteycz 6y ago
      Also, I'm hired to do a job. Around 1-2 year long job. I finish it and move on to what excites me next. My best hiring/HR managers and recruiters understand this, it makes our cooperation a bliss.
    - ViViDboarder 6y ago
      Personally I consider it a yellow flag when hiring. It could be a sign that they are likely to hop to the next thing and not worth investing in, or it could just be that they are looking for the right place to settle in. I will generally ask about their experiences and what they are looking for to try to discern which camp they may be in. As with all hiring though, this is far from perfect.
      - deleted 6y ago

np_tedious 6y ago

I've never made a post, but I do think I've experienced some of these benefits. Then again I've also become a more attractive job candidate. Tough to separate these things

mannymanman 6y ago

Do you make a post looking for a job while you're still working at another company? Wouldn't this raise red flags at your existing workplace? I've been told that it's a good idea to look for your next job while you're already working somewhere else, and I'm curious how the 'writing posts' strategy would hold up in this situation. +1 to the hundreds of views that posts get. LinkedIn is insane that way.

runeks 6y ago
> Do you make a post looking for a job while you're still working at another company? Wouldn't this raise red flags at your existing workplace? I’m not OP, but as I read it OP just makes a post saying e.g. “my experience with #cryptocurrency and #blockchain combined with #ai on #iot devices has taught me...” etc. In other words, not a text that says “I’m looking for a job”, but just something that reveals areas of expertise.
- frongpik 6y ago
  The number one rule of a good salesman is to not look like a salesman. IIRC, it's from the Thiel's book.

AtlasBarfed 6y ago

While that seems great, it's still a recruiter enablement platform where almost all opportunities will be vampired in the bill rate or salary by commissions. The fact that linkedin can't provide direct-to-company recruiting and opportunity research shows the platform is largely a failure.

Ancalagon 6y ago
Why would linkedIn want to do that? They'd then be losing out on a serious source of profits

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

indymike 6y ago

LinkedIn has been a huge win for job seekers and employers alike. The rest of it is quite strange largely because LinkedIn is trying to deal with users who appear for a job search, get something, go dormant for a few years, rinse & repeat.

maest 6y ago

This only works in tech, as it is a seller's market. The situation is very different if you're looking for a non-tech job.

alborzb 6y ago
Not at all. From my experience (consulting/marketing/advertising/finance), its the same in most professional fields... Job hopping can be a great way to advance your career and your salary.