[Closed] Linkedin

It is an entirely unnecessary evil. I deleted my account after my first year of going freelance and it has done me no harm whatsoever.

But an effective online reputation medium IS necessary. I just realised that Twitter and my profile on Drupal.org were simply far more effective *for me* than LinkedIn.

Rachel

Not necessary, but potentially useful depending on your profession.

I keep my network relatively tight: people I have worked with, or done work for, or friends I have in related professions.

I've got a couple of connections that are not work related, just for a bit of breadth, but they are very much the minority. Nothing looks sadder than your mum vouching for your skills. 😀

(I've had a few interesting job offers through it - as well as a loads of professional recruiters - but I'm not actively job hunting at the moment, so it's more just a reminder to my boss that I [i]could[/i] be 🙂 )

Like Graham says, it depends on your profession/industry/niche.

I'm in my current role only because of LI. We have a very active presence on there and use it to recruit a fair number of people each year.

Horses for courses.

PS LI Groups are a good place to build kudos too.

I think it's pretty over rated as a recruitment tool, in my industry at least anyway.

However, I use it a lot for news, I 'follow' a lot of companies I am interested in and relevant news pops up, colleagues also like/share interesting and relevant stuff.

It can be useful for making contacts at a more senior level within companies...... I have a staff member who uses it to promote my office furniture business and from
Linked In contracts she has generated approaching £60k on business in the last four months. So it can / does work..... I can't make it work for myself though !

I think it depends how much of yourself you've shared on LinkedIn profile. I used to have around 50% profile previously and there was no response from recruiters, but recently I have added each and every thing, detailing my current and previous job descriptions and I have been contacted by the recruiters. So, another point is also how much of yourself you're posting on your profile.

Don't really see a downside to it, I do get people wanting to connect to me for no good reason that I can see. A lot of agents, some I reject. As I do projects I tend to connect to people I've worked with each time so a useful way of keeping a connection. Had a few good jobs come my way through it - and a lot of ones that show the agent hasn't read my profile properly.

Sort of have to have it - in my industry you've got to know a lot of people and LI is a way of at least fining out the names of people you should know.

I do hate it though, I've got a few real mates who I'm connected with on there, only because it beneifits us both (if only marginally) but we never speak about it, or via it, there's nothing worse than someone who posts stuff about their real life on LI.

Prett harmless, I mainly use it to contact ex colleagues if I want to pick their brains about something.

Never been interested in joining. The less information about me that's in the public domain, the better.

As said previously - it depends on what you want.
I keep my Linked In account strictly professional. I reject friends request and direct them to FB instead.
I'm being made redundant in 2 months so I'm keeping my Linked In account pretty fresh - I get lots of interest from recruiters and also include a link to my account in my CV. Whenever I've spoken to a potential employer, I notice that they (the contact and/or HR) go and look at my Linked In account within 24 hours.
Some interesting data here from 2014:

"89% of all recruiters report having hired someone through LinkedIn"

Source:

http://blog.capterra.com/top-15-recruiting-statistics-2014/

It's a bit like facebook, but with more pointless motivational memes and sycophantic 'likes'.

I presume it's just free advertising by recruitment agents, and the unemployed sucking upto them.

The less information about me that's in the public domain, the better.

Be afraid....

Yeah! but they also used to have a premium option, which says that it will help you connect to various recruiters. Has anyone tried that?

In my experience the behaviour of recruiters on linkedin is pretty disgusting. Rapidly becoming my least favorite profession.

Got my current job on LinkedIn.

I like it.

In my experience the behaviour of recruiters on linkedin is pretty disgusting. Rapidly becoming my least favorite profession.

that has nothing to do with linkedin...