Wow! Granted I’m ‘just a recruiter’…I cannot believe how cliche we’ve become…half of the positions I have are Direct Hire positions with huge clients who outsource their HR and hiring…should sound familiar to those of you in the IT world??? I could tell you WHO to call as far as hiring mangers go…for just about every company in my area…granted, alot of ‘head-hunters’ are BS’ers…it’s a fast developing line of work and those recruiters who are unethical will be left behind…being as it’s becoming the only way for most large companies to do their hiring…you’d be better off not ignoring the so called SPAM…and at least ‘listening’…a good recruiter wouldn’t call you if your resume and experience wasn’t what their client was looking for…just weed them out and question who you’re talking to.
The only benefit I get out of it is that I can pretend to have a lot of friends
Maybe…
LinkedIn is great for people like myself who are independent contractors and need to keep in touch with others in the IT field. When I’m ready to finish an assignment I can send out an email to recruiters, headhunters, etc and let them know I’m in the market for a new gig. My resume and contact info are easily available to them and those with an interest can follow up.
I treat LinkedIn as a personal contact list where the contacts do the work of keeping thier information current.
I dont use LI. Not because its not good but becuase it presents in my mind many risks that I’m not willing to accept. PPL’s major concerns are about getting your time wasted by spam, headhunters etc. My concern however is to minimize the ability for someone to defraud or target me for something bad (however small that risk is). Put simply, I dont want to be made a target for such things as Targeted Attack Viruses which are on the rise and use your job titles/positions and personal history data to build their payloads or likelihood of success. I have enough problem dealing with smaller daily issues let alone having to one day deal with getting hit by the big one just because i ‘publish’ details about me on a globally accessible internet site. The harder it is for ppl to get information about me, the harder it is to assimilate something real that i might fall for and suffer for simply because i’m successful. Yes you can say i’m paranoid but thats my choice and I’m happy with it.
In concept i think LI has its good points but it has its potential ugly side of which i’m not willing to deal with. Yes LI is not the only tool that ppl can use to get your information from, but thats also why i dont use services like this. I beleive i’m not stupid but then again so did those many ppl who fell for the initial nigeria bank scams.
Linked in was how I acquired my current job. I think it is a great tool if you use it correctly.
There are plenty of benefits to LinkedIn. Anyone who wants to develop business, share ideas, find employees, find jobs can benefit from using LinkedIn. I’m actually too busy to put up a website to bitch about because I’ve found work for friends and myself.
If you’re tech saavy, you can get the best of both worlds and make it a win-win situation. This requires that your mind gets up off its lazy ass and does a little abstract reasoning.
S2T1, Silicon Valley, Cali
Me, me, me. The benefit I got was hearing a recomendation I posted helped a past colleague get a job.
You can cancel your account? B.S. The 1st reply you get back pretends like they will cancel the account, but they don’t. The email responses are funny and I will update until they stop replying. How much do you want to bet some of the positive responses are from LinkedIn people?
Hi Brent,
Thanks for replying back to us. We will not remove the account. If there is anything that we can do please let us know.
Thanks for using LinkedIn!
Nathalie P. Customer Support Specialist
Original Message Follows:
The Questions and Qnsweres feature is outstanding. I have learned and been able to contribute substantially to small business through this capablitiy. I have also obtained numerous clients through linked in
Ken Larson
SCORE Counselor
I like Linked In. In my field, my collegues tend to move from company to company and it’s a great way for me to keep up with who has moved where!
I can’t get out of LinkedIn. I have sent numerous emails to the system and they have not replied. I hate it.
Think it’s pretty pitiful when you say a call from a search consultant isn’t a benefit. Obviously you don’t understand how the system. What comes 'round goes 'round. Too bad for you.
You can’t easily remove yourself from LInkedIn, but you can change all your information, including your name. My contacts woke up one day and found they had a new, bizarre contact who they never heard of. I had a lot of fun coming up with the fake information.
Bingo. I deleted all my info, disassociated my work email address, and listed myself as a Rodeo Clown. That P.O.S. site is nothing but porn-for-recruiters and a tool for lazy prospective employers. If some jackass were to turn me away because of the content of that site (i.e. contacting my contacts), F’em.
People just don’t realize what they are giving up. I once had a less-than-ethical headhunter flat-out offer me cash money for a copy of my company directory. Of course, I told him to piss up a rope. This should, however, give you an idea of how valuable information like this is - to the wrong people - LinkedIn, for one.
You ain’t got no friends, that’s what it is.
Spoken like somebody who thinks things such as “MySpace friends” matter.
Peer pressure, or some indeterminate, nebulous future promise of benefit, isn’t a good enough reason to opt in to this particular social pyramid scheme.
“…forward this letter to 10 friends or else…yada yada yada”. Amen, brother. LinkedIN is bullpuckey.
If you sit back and expect the world to come to you then I’m afraid that it, er, won’t.
How does not participating in Grown-Up MySpace™ equate to “expecting the world to come to [me]”? I don’t need some horsecrap middleman making bank off of data I provide. Lest we FORGET that not only is there value in each one of our sets of personal data, but ALSO [more?] value in the CONNECTION info we would provide.
Aaron G
You are right on the money, Aaron.
I think you use it when needed and make your profile only available to those you trust to be respectful of your privacy and your time.
And what are the long-run assurances that the dweebs BEHIND LinkedIn will “be respectful of your privacy”? Practically ZERO.
Konstantin Guericke
I hope you go bankrupt.
The deal is that Linkedin advertises “11 million subscribers” but in reality, I suspect a lot of the “members” are like me, who signed up just to appease a friend (or so we thought) and not piss them off.
Bingo. I put some basic info in at the time. It has since been stripped out and replaced with bogus/ludicrous info.
The only benefit I get out of it is that I can pretend to have a lot of friends
Ten points for honesty. If not you, personally (if you’re joking), this is the main driver for most of the knuckleheads using the “service”.
Linked In stikes me as just another human resources circle jerk and fake jobs database.
Correct.
Think it’s pretty pitiful when you say a call from a search consultant isn’t a benefit.
“Search consultant”. LOL! Spoken like a truly sleazy head-hunter. As they say in Hollywood, JobPimp, don’t call me - I’ll call you.
I think you were expecting too much out of LinkedIn. It is a social networking site, just like MySpace and Facebook - except it is for business professionals. I expect nothing more from LinkedIn except to help me reconnect with friends and acquaintances that I have worked with over the past 15 years.
I do get several connections a week, and it’s fun to see and hear from old ‘work buddies.’ I have even had someone I’ve worked with offer me a job. If I don’t know the person, I reject their connection – I’m not interested in having the most connections/friends on LinkedIn.
It’s simply a matter of realistic expectations. As I said, it is just one more social network with a business front.
Aj
Linkedin is the only networking site of value. I was able to connect with past coworkers and bosses, and then memorialize recommendations from bosses on it. For a professional reputation online, it seems pretty useful to me. And, for getting jobs, it’s great.
I just closed mine!
I’m leery of sites like this but to say I gain no direct value from this is absolutely not the case. In the IT industry, its crucial to stay in touch with people. I don’t appreciate spam any more than the rest of the world but I don’t feel that I’m being taken advantage of here. Sure, there are a lot of potential for such but I’ve not personally witnessed it.
I use this tool for a number of reasons. The first one is to find both old and new contacts and to stay in touch with them. Secondly, there is so much flux in the Tech industry and I know so many good people, I work hard to refer them to job opportunities when I hear of them. To me this is a tool that enables me to be socially responsible and accountable to my friends and colleagues who have helped me get where I am and gives me an opportunity to give back.
Hey folks.
You do not need it, do not use it. coffee is everywhere. I do not drink. same for you with linkedin?
what is the matter?
Impugn – for someone so against internet socializing, you sure spent a lot of time and thought agreeing with what 10 other people already said. way to contribute!
You Win at The Interweb!
Absolutely right - I hate it and it appears to be one of the lousiest written social networking pages. I stumble over bugs all the time. Will try to file a ticket to have my account removed from that website.
I was a member for almost a year and have not gotten any valuable offers from other linkedin users.