Controversy. That is what blogging is all about- right? I know this will raise some eyebrows and there will be people who will disagree with me. Heck- I will probably get bombarded with Linkedin agents after writing this. I just have to say it though. Are you as sick and tired of LinkedIn as I am?
There was a day where I thought that LinkedIn was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I was an early adopter. I believed, and still believe, in the power of networking. The premise of LinkedIn is terrific. It is a tool to connect with people and to find people who know people who can help you in a career search. It can be used to help sales people. It can help you just to stay in touch with former co-workers.
I remember it like yesterday when I reached the holy grail of 500 connections. I thought I was somebody. I was part of the cool club. Not many people had 500 connections when I reached it. Really, not many people were using it other than recruiters when I was using it.
Do you remember when recommendations first came out? Oh, the recommendations. It was cool to have recommendations on your LinkedIn profile. Can you remember the last time you asked for a recommendation? It has been a while hasn’t it. The reason is because LinkedIn is so wrapped up in “Endorsements”. Endorsements? Are you kidding me? I don’t even know half the people who have endorsed me. I am proud to say I haven’t once asked for an endorsement.
LinkedIn has become an empire. There is no one else like them. They are HUGE. They now are a company on a mission to make money. I don’t blame them necessarily, but it doesn’t mean I have to agree or like what they are doing.
LinkedIn is now considered a job board. Who uses Monster or Career Builder anymore? LinkedIn has convinced most every company in America the only way to find candidates is to use their product. They are finding ways daily to drive people to use the LinkedIn recruiter product.
The problem we are having is that LinkedIn has got everyone by their private parts. Recruiters absolutely have to use LinkedIn. It is the white pages of candidates. On top of that, every company, every headhunter, and every career coach is telling candidates that they have to have a top notch LinkedIn profile. So- recruiters would be stupid not to look on LinkedIn to find individuals.
So since they have us, why not make money doing it. Even as a recruiter, I am finding it difficult to keep up with all of the changes on LinkedIn. I frequently talk to my other recruiting friends to try and make sense of all of the mess that they are making. I feel like I need a handbook that comes out every couple of months to know what they are up to.
People are asking to connect for no reason just so they can have a 2nd degree connection. As someone who receives a ridiculous amount of invitations, please give me a REASON to connect.
It isn’t just recruiters who are sick of LinkedIn. It works both ways. High Tech Candidates are so sick of being bombarded with InMail spam that they can hardly see straight. I think some just would rather delete their account than get all the ridiculous non-related job “opportunities” available.
Recruiters almost have to Spam now to get any responses. It is like that annoying telemarketing call you get at 8 PM asking you to donate money to your Alma matter. If you get a 5% response rate, what are you going to do when your manager is asking for volume of resumes though?
Lastly, and I will stop my rant. I used to enjoy going to my LinkedIn page and see what is going on. Now, I dread it. Like many leaders have said there are more eye tests, pictures of Lions, quizzes and utter crap that I don’t have time to sort through all of it anymore.
It is sad. I really liked LinkedIn. It is a terrific database. What is the answer? I don’t know.
What a great premise LinkedIn had. I wish they would put some parameters on the content going out though.
In a nutshell, they have monopolized the market and there are going to be people walking away from the tool at some point in the near future. They are just as frustrated as me.
I would love to hear your thoughts on the subject.
Wholeheartedly agree Will – in a nutshell, they have ceased to serve the best interests of their userbase and have instead turned their attentions to how they can extract maximum monetary gain from the near-monopoly they’ve created. Which is fine all the while something new doesn’t crop up to steal their dinner.
Fear not though, the “People Aggregators” I’m seeing emerging are going to give recruiters a tool that even LinkedIn can only dream of – and then I suspect their goose will be cooked. Why fish in a pool of 280m candidates if you can fish in a pool of 500m, 600m or 700m+ ?!?!
Thanks Tony. The future of LinkedIn will be interesting. I am interested in seeing another tool out there. I know there are a ton of people out there that feel the same way.
Spot on! Yes, it used to be a joy to use LinkedIn and connect with people. Now you need a machete to whittle through the spam, endorsements and clutter. I used to look forward to checking in, now I dread the numerous messages that don’t pertain to my network that I have to swim through before I sink to the bottom of drudgery.
It is sad that it is sold to the job seeker as the holy grail, and truly sold. So many job seekers are being told they have to get the Premium account to be seen by recruiters. Didn’t some other company just get sued for making job promises to their job seeker customers?
And yes, the changes are mind boggling. So many great features were taken away and no instructions on how to use them. When something doesn’t work, you wait days possibly weeks to get an answer back from LinkedIn Customer Service and it usually is not the answer you needed anyway. The tech back end support changes on a weekly basis so you don’t know what you are going to get when you log in.
Will thanks for opening up the discussion and let’s see what we get!
Hi Kathleen,
Thank you for responding. Your comments are awesome. I am interested to see if someone from LinkedIn replies. You do need a machete!
Will
I dropped LinkedIn a year or so ago and am glad I did.
Sort of…I don’t get calls anymore limited as they were, but even then it felt like you had to have your nose so far up someone’s backside just to get a job, I did not feel LIn was a real service and just a way to brown nose to ATTEMPT to get a job through them.
Hi Randy,
I wouldn’t suggest you drop off LinkedIn. It is something everyone needs in 2014. In a couple of years? I don’t know. The tool is amazing. As I pointed out, currently it is the white pages for anyone. I just wanted to point out some things that have changed over the past couple of years. There are some frustrations from many and me. What is the future? There is some tweaking that needs to happen.
I signed up for LinkedIn when I was still employed, found nothing of interest in my field (Administrative Assistant), but kept half an eye on it. Once I lost my job, of course I was glad that I’d kept at least half an eye on it, because I was sure to CRUSH my job search, CRUSH the competition, and HAVE THE PERFECT INTERVIEW! If you were selling it, I was buying it, even though I couldn’t afford it–after all, I’d have a full time job soon, and I could CRUSH that credit card debt!
Fast forward 6 months, and, well…I crushed something, all right. I CRUSHED the phone and keyboard as I got whatever refunds I could get, and learned that those wondrous experts had a lot of fine print when it came to a “no questions asked guarantee.”
I’ve learned a lot–I’ve learned that anyone who promises you a “JOB IN 45 DAYS–GUARANTEED!) or that you will have “THE PERFECT INTERVIEW” is basically a snake oil salesman that’s no different than someone selling (insert get rich quick scheme/weight loss scheme/real estate scheme/pyramid scheme here). For some reason, we laugh at those losers (who also have invaded LinkedIn), but not the “Miracle Workers.”
Oh, and let’s not get on the (insert position here) who has just heard about the latest (insert miracle here) that will give us all the above. Ever search some of the names and companies? They don’t exist! So, not only does LinkedIn have a monopoly on the job search, it’s also CRAWLING with spammers! It’s win-win!
Linked in fatigue is a real issue, and an opportunity. I believe that great recruiters will flourish as ‘passive’ candidates switch off from the noise. Great recruiters, with real life networks will add value by delivering to clients, who already have their Linked in Recruiter accounts, but experience response rates dropping off. As headhunters, we just need to keep doing what we are paid for- not dumping inmails on soft targets.
Hi Samantha,
Thanks for responding. I have always said that there is value in Linkedin. Inmails are not the answer. Inmails are the problem. If you use the tool as a database to find names, then I believe you will find success. That is what the tool was originally set up to do.
Will
Hey Will! I think you are seeing more and more people agree with you on this one. What it comes does to is that LinkedIn is a victim of their own success. When they set out it was not about recruiters, but they took advantage of an opportunity. I’m sure they will start to see a decline in the amount of people who are signing up for new profiles, and you may see candidates only creating profiles when they are unemployed, and deleting them once they have found employment. At least you can say I told ya so when people start dropping like flies.
Hey Ryan! Thanks for responding. I don’t think you could have said it any better. Linkedin has become a victim of their success. It will be interesting to see if candidates start deleting their profiles.
I agree with you, Will. I love using my LinkedIn Recruiter account for targeting candidates and still do have some success with it. However, the barrage of ‘junk’ posts, connection requests from individuals with no relevant information or notes on why they wish to network, and the amount of Endorsements from people I do not know (or have ever worked with) have become irritating. No, Joe Smith, I actually do not know how to Sell a Car or Develop Software but thank you for the compliment!?
I will continue to utilize it but certainly in a different way.
Hey Amanda! Long time no talk! Thanks for commenting. We have to use Linkedin as recruiters, but it is becoming irritating isn’t it?
Will,
The challenge is LinkedIn is taking money from both ends, end users and recruiters. They claim to serve both but…. we all know that is not possible. A paid LinkedIn account is suppose to raise the visibility of your profile but hiring professionals want to see the best match and not someone who has artificially raised their profile.
They cannot serve two masters. That is my opinion and I am sticking to it!
My friend @HeatherBussing just closed her LinkedIn account. Here’s how she did it: tinyurl. com/l9p4slg
Wow Maureen! Thanks for sharing. I do not have the luxury to delete a LinkedIn account. I need it to do my job. Heather is right though, there is a huge amount of spam.
Regarding the changes in LinkedIn features –
I too have been frustrated with the endless changes. I’ve lost features that I really used.
But this far along into the process and I have begun to realize that it is a process. While it seemed haphazard and endless, now I can step back and see that they are changing the LinkedIn site in a very Agile way, one feature (or feature group) at a time, rather than a “big bang” approach that takes a year or more to do a complete re-design and relaunch. The profiles, the groups, the contacts, the “who’s viewed”, and now the group management features – they all represent a unified look and feel and featureset.
This is the first time I have seen this done on this large a scale, and (from the perspective of delivering new features in a timely fashion, rather than letting a competitor get the drop on them feature-wise) has bee successful.
But in other ways, this has been a failure. Had LinkedIn communicated well to the membership that this is what they were doing – making incremental changes toward an overall new look/feel/featureset – and prioritizing those upgrades by, say, user-requested features (the way Microsoft is handling its move away from InfoPath and toward new tools, as an example), then their users would likely be suffering less “upgrade fatigue”. (“They moved my cheese AGAIN?!?!?”)
But as for the rest, I have to agree with Marc – LinkedIn is trying to serve two masters, and that just doesn’t work too well. At some point, there may be a critical mass of users who find some other took to do the same thing, or something that will something different/better and LinkedIn may be in a poor position to defend itself from a mass departure.
In the meantime, regularly back up your LinkedIn contacts, promote quality connections, drop people who misuse the tool, and keep agitating for LinkedIn to be a better, more user-responsive tool. (After all, we are the product they are trying to sell!)
Jim, thank you for responding. They really could be doing a better job at communication to the users. They have moved my cheese and yours. 🙂 I agree with you on what you have said.
Will, I just saw this – but for now, for job seekers like me – Linkedin is just about the only game in town. However even though I was an early adopter of G+, I never really filled out my profile in a proper manner (as far as job, career, etc.). I just sort of put down very high level stuff. But now I’m determined to go back and retrofit my career history and skills on my G+ page and maybe if enough people do this, it’ll provide some much needed competition to Linkedin.
Hey Mark,
Thanks for responding. I think LinkedIn is going to get its fill of competition in the next couple of years. As of right now, LinkedIn is a necessary evil. Google Plus is picking up steam every day. I prefer the platform over LinkedIn at this point. I can not keep up with all of the changes LinkedIn is making.
Will
I havent used LI for over a year now. It really has become a jungle, the page makes no sense at all. Too much information about what everybody is doing and not doing blah
I still use it, but would love to see some serious competitor in the market!
Linked In is taking the joy out of recruiting. Worse than that, Employers do not understand the ongoing changes to the Linked In. They don’t want to upgrade to a recruiter seat ($$$) making it difficult to deliver with the current tools and features available with the Executive account.
Laura, LinkedIn is still a great tool for recruiting, but to your point, you have to beat them at their own game. There are so many workarounds that make it a useful tool, but sometimes you need a play- by- play guidebook to understand them all.
Yes there is an alt. It is called applying for a job which you can still do easily from company websites. Usually jobs on LinkedIn seemed unreal anyway. Wasted a lot of time looking at mirage jobs there.
Fully agree with that statement. Perhaps the best rewarding way for me to earn a fair mandate was to apply directly or ask for a meeting with people I would be asked to worked with – showing real interest to be part of their team. Unfortunately this isn’t always that easy as we often have to go through some long HR redundant and useless interview process pattern. IMHO recruiting a candidate with proper expertise is a crucial task in many modern fast growing technologies and therefore should leave NO room for improvisation. Yet this is often not the case as I’ve witnessed many HR fake experts in many recruiting firms on LinkedIn. I’ll claim it loud: expertise is not something rookies or kiddos can gain in only a month… There still may some good recruiters or head hunters out there I could fully trust though I’m getting a bit skeptic on easily spotting them on LinkedIn and that’s a shame…
Bingo!
Top mistake LinkedIn made: Allowing it to become a job board for headhunters and employment agencies. It had so much potential to cut out the cost and dysfunction of those middlemen and enable companies to hire directly. Unfortunately, that potential has been lost. Then it created opportunities for people to show their writing talents. Those articles have now joined interruption advertising in annoyance and irrelevance.
In one way, LinkedIn benefits a certain portion of the population. They hire the software engineers and computer programmers that no other companies will hire.
I’m amazed that LinkedIn has no real competitor.