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Huh. It seems I'm the only one here who finds value in LinkedIn. Yes, it has led to actual, paying jobs. It takes some management on my part, but it's a lot ea

by itgoon 11y ago

Huh. It seems I'm the only one here who finds value in LinkedIn. Yes, it has led to actual, paying jobs. It takes some management on my part, but it's a lot easier than hunting around from site to site, or going to meetups, or any of that other stuff. Do I get spammed? Sure. That's why I have a specific email account for them. Some of the spam is quite informative. I learn about openings early on, and can often find the hiring company by taking the text of the spam and searching the various job boards. I get genuine requests, too. I take the time to respond to those just as genuinely. For all the talk of the importance of networking around here, I'm kind of surprised at the antipathy. It's very low effort, just a few minutes a week. I regard a lot of the complaints as symptomatic of the overall industry. I finally started going to meetups, and the signal-to-noise is just as bad, if not worse.

vpeters25 11y ago
> I learn about openings early on, and can often find the hiring company by taking the text of the spam and searching the various job boards. This would be great if it could be automated somehow: paste email to a macro job board and get links to matching posts.
- akshat_h 11y ago
  It is a tradeoff. If you are looking for a job, or are new to the industry, linkedin is better than trying to build a professional network otherwise. After you have been in the industry for, say 15 years, and pretty much know most of the people working in your space, are highly specialized, then the recruiter emails will feel like spam. My guess is that for the first case, you aren't specific enough about yourself, so recruiters have a good chance of reaching you, based on your profile. After a certain amount of time, your profile readily doesn't distinguish your interests clearly. For example, a java developer tag at the start of one's career is quite different from a senior java developer who has understanding of internals of JVM. Recruiter may not know about the second case enough to be of much help.
thoman23 11y ago
> Huh. It seems I'm the only one here who finds value in LinkedIn. I don't get the hate either. When it comes time for your next job search, it's incredibly valuable to have a consolidated list of everyone you've ever worked with where you can see where they work now. When I was looking for some part time work while launching my (bootstrapped) startup, I reached out to about 50 people from my LinkedIn network and it worked out great for me. As for spam, I just filter and/or ignore it (yes, I get a ton of it, maybe 10+ recruiter emails a day).

by itgoon 11y ago

vpeters25 11y ago

> I learn about openings early on, and can often find the hiring company by taking the text of the spam and searching the various job boards. This would be great if it could be automated somehow: paste email to a macro job board and get links to matching posts.

akshat_h 11y ago
It is a tradeoff. If you are looking for a job, or are new to the industry, linkedin is better than trying to build a professional network otherwise. After you have been in the industry for, say 15 years, and pretty much know most of the people working in your space, are highly specialized, then the recruiter emails will feel like spam. My guess is that for the first case, you aren't specific enough about yourself, so recruiters have a good chance of reaching you, based on your profile. After a certain amount of time, your profile readily doesn't distinguish your interests clearly. For example, a java developer tag at the start of one's career is quite different from a senior java developer who has understanding of internals of JVM. Recruiter may not know about the second case enough to be of much help.

thoman23 11y ago

> Huh. It seems I'm the only one here who finds value in LinkedIn. I don't get the hate either. When it comes time for your next job search, it's incredibly valuable to have a consolidated list of everyone you've ever worked with where you can see where they work now. When I was looking for some part time work while launching my (bootstrapped) startup, I reached out to about 50 people from my LinkedIn network and it worked out great for me. As for spam, I just filter and/or ignore it (yes, I get a ton of it, maybe 10+ recruiter emails a day).