1

I really hate LinkedIn and everything about it. It is nothing but a spam platform. It’s nothing but an email marketing list for recruiters.

Today someone contacted me about a job at IBM in Westchester County. Literally walking distance from my home there. I responded with what I earn currently because, hey, IBM’s great, I’ve worked there before and I’d be happy to go back for a good rate. I won’t lie, IBM is a great place to work.

Instead of responding with information about the job, all I get is an automated unsubscribe notification.

Very professional, random LinkedIn jacka$$, very professional.

23 Spice ups
2

I’ve received some spam from them but generally I’ve had good luck. My current job is 100% due to LinkedIn networking. But you’re right, I’ve been sent some ridiculously low positions as well as some that I wasn’t even close to being qualified for.

1 Spice up
3

I’ve found only two uses for it.

  1. To be a billboard about me for HR weenies and anyone else that might be interested, including hiring managers. Admittedly this does invite unwanted crap. But I’m not as highly skilled as some of you so maybe I’m spared a lot more spam than you get.

  2. Connect with current and former co-workers, primarily for the purposes of maintaining professional references. Especially since I don’t really get close to any of my co-workers and don’t even know the home or cell phone (non-company) for them.

4 Spice ups
4 
"LinkedIn jacka$$"

Made my day! Thank you for putting a smile on my face. SpiceUP!

2 Spice ups
5

LinkedIn is great for staying professionally connected to coworkers past and present, but when it comes to recruiting, they are definitely quantity over quality.

1 Spice up
6

I get hit with many jobs every day. They are all just email blasts based on random searches. To make matters worse, LinkedIn wasn’t build to be a job hunting system so lacks all of the necessary details and information to be useful for job searches AND I don’t keep it up to date so it has like the wrong state on it because no social media system could be less important than LinkedIn. It’s just useless. I think that it actually makes job hunting harder.

In fact, LinkedIn themselves tried to hire me a few weeks ago and couldn’t use LinkedIn even to find me again! They couldn’t search their own system it was so useless and it told them I was in the wrong city and didn’t show what level I was at so they couldn’t come close to my current pay let alone entice me to relocate and accept a job with them.

They internally came out looking like complete tools. no wonder their site is absolute garbage.

1 Spice up
7

In theory that’s why I have it. But I’ve yet to reach out to someone that way. Although one old coworker did reach out to me this week through there. It is not 100% bad, but had they just used Facebook it would have been better.

Facebook is everything LinkedIn is but without the endless spam. It’s sad when Facebook beats your social platform in every aspect.

8

Well in their defense I don’t think it was designed to be a job hunt site. And you not keeping your profile current isn’t their fault. That’s like saying I’ve been married for 5 years but someone contacted me form my old Match.com account that I haven’t updated since I got married. (Not quite the same, but the same for illustration purposes).

1 Spice up
9

Problem is… in their interview they CLAIMED that that was the purpose of the site. So if they designed it for a different purpose than they intended that’s even more embarrassing yet.

And the reason that my profile wasn’t up to date was because when I joined it was purely for keeping in contact with coworkers, not for job hunting which was never mentioned in LinkedIn’s sign up process.

So the fact that they are using stale data for something for which it was never intended is not my fault. I never agreed or intended someone to search for me for headhunting through their site. If they did this to trick me into putting my data in, it’s their fault that I didn’t treat the data in the way that they hoped that I would. They changed the goal of the site without informing its users. And they don’t have a way to input necessary job hunting information, so even if I keep stuff up to date, anyone finding me there is a useless lead.

1 Spice up
10

Unless I’m a personal friend of someone or knew them personally years ago like an ex-coworker, or classmate I don’t want them on Facebook. I certainly don’t want my current co-workers (in most cases) to be my facebook friend. It’s my personal life and I don’t really want it tied to my professional life, except by the loosest connections. Not that I do stupid things or post stupid things on facebook, but I’ve seen and heard of too many people that have been burned.

3 Spice ups
11

Try the reverse. What if LinkedIn decided tomorrow that they were a dating site. Would your wife be upset that you’ve been keeping your data up to date on a dating site?

Or what if Match.com turned into a job hunting site? Would you be expected to know that this had happened and suddenly update your dating profile to help jobs find you? And why would a non-job hunting profile be used for job hunting?

Sounds silly in the opposite direction, right? My data is stale because I wasn’t using a site where it should be updated. That they chose to misrepresent the intention of the data isn’t my problem.

1 Spice up
12

How is Facebook different from LinkedIn? They both have all the same data and interfaces. Is it that you are intentionally using one for one thing and one for another. But if you reversed your behavior without changing either site, wouldn’t you say exactly the opposite?

I think that it is you and not the site that makes it feel that way. I have personal stuff on LinkedIn, I have professional stuff on Facebook. They are essentially two of the same thing. Just one is done mediocre and one is done like crap. Neither is done well.

2 Spice ups
13

Well they look like asses because I think we can all agree it was not meant to be a job hunting site at it’s inception. It’s just something they’ve poorly tacked on. That’s probably just someone that is believing their own companies marketing hype.

No I agree that it is not something I would even consider a first go to for jobs, neither do employers, or anyone else I know that uses it generally so I wouldn’t keep it up to date for that. It’s the same as the job sites I do belong to. I don’t update it when I’m not actively looking, save maybe one or two times a year.

14

You have a point and no that’s not your fault. But it’s still not their fault you didn’t keep the data up to date. Even if you knew it was a big job site unless you were really actively looking you probably wouldn’t be updating it often.

15

Yes, but can LinkedIn tell you which of your high school friends have become unrepentant assholes with bizarre political views normally reserved for people who live in underground bunkers?

Actually, it probably could…

7 Spice ups
16

You have a point, but the type of data specifically tracked in one or the other by default I see as different. I also see others using it in a different manner as well, plus there isn’t the junk I see on Facebook like bubble500, and toodles200, all those little silly games.

Admittedly I do link to my personal web site from linkedIn, so it’s not 100% separated but certainly better controlled. They were also designed for different social media functions.

It’s like saying two ERPs are the same thing, but they aren’t really, because there’s customization that’s gone into it to suit it for a company, or a an industry. I would say linkedIn wants to be Spiceworks for all industries but fails miserably at it. Of course that’s part of why they are failing in general. They are trying too much to be like others instead of forging their own path and standing on their own feet.

17

It is… I didn’t even know that locational data was in there (and even if it is, it isn’t useful because it lists where I live not where I would accept a job.) So since I didn’t pay attention to the data being put in as it didn’t matter and because I didn’t know that I should be somehow updating and because I knew that the data wasn’t the wrong type it is totally their fault for misusing the data that they requested.

Basically they asked the wrong question and got a plausible answer and it never occurred to them that they were asking for incorrect information, I didn’t realize because they didn’t tell me what they meant it to mean and they didn’t inform me that there was a reason to refresh the data.

If this was test driven development, it would have failed three different tests in the testing phase…

It’s a garbage in, garbage out problem. They got bad input by asking the wrong question and didn’t flag to me that it needed to be tracked. So later when the data is stale on a site I don’t use…

1 Spice up
18

I’ve been in field a long time but I’m not considered an expert like you are. I can’t imagine the hits you get. Same for developers, they’re so hot right now they probably get hits all day every day.

19

Is it bad if you agree with them?

20

See, I’d say (and have for years) the opposite. Spiceworks is more like Facebook. LinkedIn isn’t social. No one hangs out on LinkedIn. you can’t, it’s just a spam engine. Spiceworks is full of social interaction, even moreso than Facebook.