I have the job I have now because someone found me on Linked-In…maybe not the MOST useful application, but can’t hurt I guess…better to update your own info than to let someone else do it.
If you look at it as a way to gain industry knowledge (other than keeping your head in a book), becoming social with others in your field, and potentially finding the dream job, invest some time in it and see what it can do.
Hmmm… Suppose I already HAVE a dream job? Lessee…I’m self employed, spend the summer months living on a lake, the winter months living on an island, work maybe 4 hours a day, have four BMWs, two boats, a jeep, a truck,a nd a camper, and take about 8-12 weeks vacation a year. And I have more clients than I know what to do with!
Is joining Linked In going to find me a better job than that? No doubt in some festering cubicle somewhere in some God-forsaken office park in some nasty edge city nightmare like Tyson’s Corner or Silicon Valley?
Gee, no thanks. I don’t need to network to be successful - or happy. The kinds of people who network make me want to vomit.
Here’s the secret: Be LESS accessible. Try LESS hard. Spending 60-80 hours a week working so you can make 20% more than your peers and get a corner office is a false economy. You’ll end up spending 50% more and come out behind.
Uh, no thanks.
You can make MORE by working LESS. You can be successful by not trying so hard. And not every client is worth getting - many are damned nightmares. You are better off having clients seek YOU out because you do top work for low prices. Then you can pick and choose the good ones and stop chasing your tail serving problem clients.
It worked for me…
Hmmm… Suppose I already HAVE a dream job? Lessee…I’m self employed, spend the summer months living on a lake, the winter months living on an island, work maybe 4 hours a day, have four BMWs, two boats, a jeep, a truck,a nd a camper, and take about 8-12 weeks vacation a year. And I have more clients than I know what to do with!
Joe, I would like to friend you on Facebook.
p.s. ZOMBIE POKE!!
joe obviously is a white male
For me LinkedIn has been fantastic. I love that I have a web presence of my own making - which in this day and age of cyber stalkers and ‘internet voyeurs’ is incredibly important. I’d rather people see what I choose to post about me instead of find myself cringing at some of the bits pieces that have been coming up, where my name shows up, that I have absolutely no control over—like my campaign contributions which get publicly listed and reveal my political affiliation; or where - and when! - I attend religious services, which is part of a published bulletin—all of which, to me, is private information. With everyone and his mother searching the net for anything and everything they can find on people then making snap judgments, I find it invaluable that LinkedIn enables me to post exactly what I want; to control my public image and protect my good name…And that’s good enough for me.
ps - Someone was trying to defame me all over the internet a few years back and I was advised to join LinkedIn and create my own profile, which I did, also posting my photo - and suddenly, perhaps with a face to my name?, the harassment stopped. A side benefit which I found turned out to be their GROUPS - I’ve joined several and made lots of great connections, even have met up with individual members and made new friends.
i tried to cancel my $20/month subscription with linkedin. they never responded to emails and charged me for months until i finally found a way to stop the billing. Seriously this worked.
cancel or report your credit card lost or stolen with the number you used for linkedin. no new charges occurred after that. and mmy account was finally set back to the basic status no more $20 fees.
Hope this helps.
my name’s rich
I had a 20$ account and there were no trouble to cancel it.
I worked as a head hunter and for me it was a good tool. However, I have not received any other value from it - I suppose.
I am getting a new job and I am thinking to cancel my account in order to get more privacy OR I will at least delete all additional info.
What to do, I don’t know.
There are case LinkedIn is pretty useful though: I have friends and contacts all over the world and I find it useful as a live registry of contacts.
This program will allow you to find friends, family member, and co-workers. It is important we stay in touch during these times. You can also use these program to help each other.
By the way, did you know that networking expert Jan Vermeiren has written a book about LinkedIn? It is called How to REALLY use LinkedIn (see: http://www.how-to-really-use-linkedin.com) He also gives away a free light version and access to webinars.
So this is how we found out that LinkedIn doesn’t know what they’re doing.
When we joined, we thought it’s for networking, right? Simple enough. After getting invitations from people we didn’t know and also inviting people we didn’t know, our accounts were placed on block! They actually force you to sign an agreement online to not send invitations to people you don’t know!
Excuse me? Is this a joke? The whole point of LinkedIn is to network and expand your network! How can you do that if you only contact the people you already know? What a bunch of morons. They don’t even know what their company is about.
If I just want to network with people I already know, then it’s not really networking, is it? I already have all the e-mails and phone numbers of the people I know, why does anyone need linkedin for people they already know?
LinkedIn really needs to figure out what they stand for, because as of now, they’re completely confused and they confuse their customers too. They want to stand for something, which is to allow people to network, yet they block almost everyone who contacts snobs who don’t want to accept invites.
Here’s a clue LinkedIn, perhaps you should have a better system of telling those snobs to set up their account in a way that only people who know their e-mail addresses can send them invites and require it for those people, instead of punishing customers who are actually there to network!
LinkedIn is a joke. It’s definitely not for networking. LinkedIn doesn’t know the meaning of networking. It’s another facebook. It only pretends to be for professionals.
The only thing I got out of Linkedin was a bunch of calls from recruiters trying to fill jobs or looking to place people. It got to the point where I had to start screening all my calls at work from numbers I didn’t recognize. I’ve since removed my profile. I believe this site’s primary use is a database for recruiters the social networking is just to sucker people in to putting up their info.
I have never come across such a stupid and unprofessional Website. People who work at LinkedIn are complete morons. They have no business sense, no customer service and they certainly don’t care about the people who join their site. They act like complete nazis. That’s the only word that explains LinkedIn and how they treat people.
Yep, it’s true. Their customer service is nonexistent and there is no information about how to contact management, so the inmates are running the prison. I cancelled my subscription after Customer Service showed they didn’t give a damn about the problems they had created for me by keeping a free and paid account.
Idiots.
I closed my account today after being a daily user for over 3 years. I had deleted several contacts recently and starting seeing a pattern. I was not getting anything from it. I had several recs and even had my link on my resume. I spoke in interviews about my site and they had not even noticed it on the resume. I got tired of the contact junkies. I do not think it is harming anyone but it certainly has not helped me.
100% agree. I have only people from india who come to my site. Also, got 2 or 3 donation requests. It wasn’t even donation requests, it was something like “send me cash in the envilope because I my kids starve overseas”. I hate Linked in… the most boring network ever.
First, I live in Florence, and LinkedIn reads my postal code as if it were Bologna,
Second, even after editing my professional data, some of it remains the same,
Third, like almost all of you I didn’t see any benefits from LinkedIn, and not only, the fact that I can’t close my account by a simple click is clear evidence this is a violation of privacy rights.
What I want to ask you all is "can LinkedIn be reported somewhere, and in that case which is the competent entity to write to?
thanks
Linkedin is so stupid that it wont allow you to meet new people or network with people you dont know. How are you supposed to meet new network connections if you dont know people in the field. Its so stupid and its basically a catch 22 website. I hate linkedin with a passion and will never use it except to try to get information on who is in a company and to try to contact with them other ways (like google , bing, etc.). You should be able to add people you know and don’t know and invite people to your profile and send a simple hello message. It would be up to the receiver to add you or not or reply back with a message. Linked in should be more of a networking tool not a social professional business site…- which it basically is . After all whats the point of networking if you cant meet new people right? Linked in Realy SUCK SUCK SUCKS!
Even Sucks more than the New York Yankees 
- GO SOX
We can put a man on the moon, build nano technology and we are on the brink of finding a cure for cancer and Aids but the college educated guys from Linkedin cannot find it within the realms of their intelligence to provide a simple way for their customers to downgrade their account.
I can just picture it now - the production meeting where the already rich guys behind Linkedin figure out exactly how much more money they are going to make. One eager employee stands up with a PowerPoint presentation with the following charts.
- How many people sign up for internet subscriptions and will forget about it.
- How many people will give up if you make it hard for them to cancel their subscription
- How much money they will make from the % of people who sign up who fall into the above category.
- How many cars you can buy with all that money.
I, obviously, am a disgruntled customer who has tried and failed on several occasions to cancel my Linkedin account. I filled in the online customer form several times. The clever guys at Linkedin made it so that you cant contact them directly so you have no record of any disputes. “What email? We never got that one?” they will ask when you argue with them.
Now Mastercard informs me I am $200 poorer and Linkedin are $200 richer for a service which I only wanted to send one bloody email from and tried to cancel 3 times.
Well, I have a statistic for all the other disgruntled customers out there like me.
If 1% of Linkedin’s credit card transactions are disputed by their customers, Visa and Mastercard will close their account and will suspend Linkedin’s ability to take money from any credit cards for a very long time.
If you, like me, have been ripped off and ignored by Linkedin the please ensure you notify your credit card company and dispute your payment.
Assholes.