Ask HN [Developers]: LinkedIn Effectiveness | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN [Developers]: LinkedIn Effectiveness

7 pointsjpd75013 comments

HN Developers - when job seeking... I'm wondering:

1) how effective do you find LinkedIn in representing you to recruiters?

2) Do you really care who viewed your profile on LinkedIn?

3) Does LinkedIn properly represent your skill set?

4) Do you get a lot of recruiters' spamming you with positions that dont really have much to do with your background or outdated?

Do you feel like there are better ways they could do #1-4 above or make a more succinct profile?

Thanks.

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I'm a HUGE fan of LinkedIn. You get what you put into it, though. For me, LinkedIn is my online resume - even moreso than GitHub, because the nature of my work prevents me from contributing to open source.

I also definitely care who views my profile, as it can be used as a good icebreaker. Whenever someone interesting has viewed my profile, I immediately reach out to them. Odds are they wanted to learn about me for a reason. Maybe I can help them with something.

How you make people visit your profile? I keep working in improving my LinkedIn but people rarely visit my profile

Most important thing is to expand your connections. You can only rely on appearing in search so much. Bear in mind that whenever you do something to LinkedIn, it gets blasted out to all your contacts in their activity feed. So the more contacts you have, the more people will see their updates.

I recommend being liberal with adding people you meet on LinkedIn. That's not to say you should be spammy or add people you don't know, but if you meet someone at a conference tell them you'll look for them on LinkedIn.

Once you've grown your network of contacts, be sure to update regularly and with useful content! But not TOO regularly.

Also bear in mind that with LinkedIn, you are catering to working professionals. I prefer to update my profile early on weekdays, because I suspect that'll get my changes to the most eyeballs.

Aaah, I see.

I have a very good network, but I only update my profile, I don't write stuff or generate content. I suppose this is where I go wrong. (and what I am supposed to put in content there anyway?)

How you make people visit your profile? I keep working in improving my LinkedIn but people rarely visit my profile...

I've suffered years of non-stop spamming from linkedin.

"Your friend Bob from India wishes to connect with you". "Reminder, your friend Charlie from Canada recently invited .."

I've received hundreds of unsolicated mails, each of which was junked, binned, and reported.

Recently I started issuing DMCA-takedown notices for content I'd produced which was copy/pasted into their forums/groups.

I will be happy when linkedin ceases operations.

To keep this vaguely on-topic; most of the local friends I know who mention linkedin regard is as a ghetto, something they used to use before they started receiving connections from people they'd never met, in countries they'd never visited.

Please explain what you don't / wouldn't use on LinkedIn and what you wish was.

I'd appreciate it.

Thanks

I get spammed a bunch. Really LinkedIn is intended to serve the employer (not the employee), but it can be helpful when you need a very specific skill set. I know over 400 programmers. I only know of one that took a job based on linkedin interaction.

The truth, no platform is helpful or even necessary. I would only take a job offer recommendation from a friend, mostly because they would better understand what I am looking for.

Also because I like working with my friends!

Appreciate the succinct feedback gamechangr!

I assume you are a recruiter??

If so, another HN coder posted this yesterday....may interest u!

http://danrodriguez.me/blog/tips-for-tech-recruiters-from-an...

I am not, I am a developer myself. I already saw this - this is great actually it validates my thoughts as a developer experiencing the same problems myself.

I have a vert old LinkedIn profile, noone ever tried to recruit me, dunno why.

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