programming and human factors
by Jeff Atwood
From the Wikipedia entry on Linked In:
It is not possible to remove yourself from LinkedIn. Instead, you have to file a customer support ticket.
This blurb neatly summarizes everything that's wrong with the Linked In service.
I've been a member of Linked In for almost two years now. I dutifully entered my credentials and kept them up to date. The only other interaction I've had with the service since then has been a continual stream of link requests. I'm selective about who I approve, limiting it to people I've only met in real life. And the net benefit of this selectivity? As far as I can tell, zilch. Nada. Nothing. I did get a cold call from a headhunter once based on my Linked In profile, but I don't consider that a benefit.
Has this service ever been useful to anyone? I'm telling you, Linked In is the digital equivalent of a chain letter. If you really want to contact a friend of a friend (of a friend), just pick up the phone or send an email. If the only way you can reach someone is through this nutty online social pyramid scheme, you don't deserve to be taken seriously. And I can guarantee that you won't be.
Consider carefully: who really benefits from your participation in Linked In? I'll tell you who benefits: Linked In.
If you can't immediately point to a few direct benefits you personally get from participating in Linked In, then why do it? Why build Linked In's marketing database with your valuable time and information?
From this point on, I'm opting out of linked in. Like Russell Beattie, I've found that there really is no there there. If you're a member of Linked In and you're not seeing direct personal benefits, I urge you to close your Linked In account as well. It's high time we put an end to this glorified chain letter of a service.
I have been fighting linkedin and have contacted EPIC. Linkedin have created a profile for me against my consent as well as other faculty members. To make it clear: I've never received an email to add me to their list etc. I delete email that is unsolicited...clear and simple.
I have software that immediately notifies me when my name comes up and thus the email to Linkedin below:
This was done less than 48 hours ago as I closely monitor my privacy. Take me off your list immediately.
I think the are harvesting academic information from university web sites and research papers published on the Internet and then creating profiles of people who have never been to your site. I’ve noticed almost all faculty from my school are in your profiles and I’ve already asked one faculty member at my school and they deny ever approving to have such a profile or ever hearing of linkedin.
Please desist from this practice and remove me.
TonyK on March 23, 2008 12:10 PMI have been trying to cancel my LinkedIn account for three weeks with no success whatsoever. I've opened three tickets to cancel my account, and all I got is an automated reply "we are in receipt...".
LinkedIn is a DISGRACE and they should be obligated by law to provide users with a way to cancel the account without going through "customer support". They say in their blog that "the user owns the data", it's not true!
Any ideas on how to make them cancel my account will be very welcome.
Mr. C. on March 26, 2008 2:28 AMJust try unsubscribing from Linkedin. They make you feel as if
your IQ is below zero. You did not reply properly.
{Please fill in your reply below this line}
{Please fill in your reply above this line}
Hello? How many times do I have to fill in the form? Is anyone out there in LINKEDIN Customer Service? Or did HAL take over?
FIVE SERVICE TICKETS!! Not only is that a waste but completely ridiculous.
Then you call and do you get to speak to a customer service person? No, you get a voice mail. This company needs lessons in Customer Service.
I know, I will email all those who thought up this company and
email them AND I will paste all the ticket numbers and replies.
So far I've been able to connect three friends with jobs and dug up a few old connections I'd lost. I don't see anything wrong with keeping an account there even if I'm not getting much benefit out of it.
To me it's usefulness lies in the usage by account holders. It could be completely worthless if people weren't posting jobs or questions with valid answers. The fact is, people are doing both. That makes it a pretty useful service to me.
Now, ask me whether or not I think it's a service worth paying for... No.
Jeff on April 3, 2008 1:48 PMI opted out when I saw that my LinkedIn profile was the highest placed link in a search for my name. I do not want to be defined by my Linked In membership.
BUT...tighter economy equals trying harder to find work, so I signed back on after a few of my friends pinged me to join their network. Except I chose to NOT make my public profile public.
Guess what?
It's now public. Top of the search engine placement. And quess what else? My preference STILLL specify, and they confirm, that my profile will not appear on any search engines.
Simply saying that Linked In sucks does not do justice to exactly how much it sucks. It sucks like March winds blow. It sucks like every toilet in the world flushing at once. It sucks like the biggest vaccum cleaner in the world.
Can you tell I'm pissed? Well, I am, but also embarassed that I fell for it again.
Rib15 on April 7, 2008 4:48 AMI have the same issue with closing an account. Despite multiple confirmation from Stacy M. Customer Support Agent it is still open and public.
I disagree- I am a person who is building a new company who has a current company. I use linked in as a tool to let my current customer base, and friends in the industry know about my new business venture. It has helped to strengthen existing relationships and to build new ones.... I predict Linked In will be profitable, perhaps even purchased by Google or Yahoo.... It's what you make of it! Just like everything else in life. There is nothing free... Linked in is a tool for the professional, and I love it.
Alisa Diphilippo on April 22, 2008 9:30 AMI'm in the entertainment business in a linkedin sea of corporate soup. I've actually gotten 5 jobs in just 1 week that I've been on Linkedin from people seeing me on the site. THAT IS AMAZING. Funny, but I do mostly corporate entertaining. It's like being in a baseball stadium and having my name announced over and over again. VERY NICE.
I've also reconnected with former college and high school friends I haven't seen in over 25 years.
Anything that's free and gives you some type of advertising is OK with me. Any of the above gripers should just stop complaining and go away.
Not Bill Gates on May 8, 2008 7:35 AMI HATE LINKEDIN
estela on May 18, 2008 3:03 AMHere is a note that I got from a friend of mine today, and my reason for Googling "linkedin".
It appears that her problem is one that several of you have seen above.
Just a quick apology email....
today I received an invitation to join this "Linked in" networking site that seems focused on employment/ professional networking, and while checking it out... it invited my entire contact list... which I had NOT intendedto do.
Sorry!!!
The upshot is that I have gotten several confused emals from folks I have not otherwise talked to in a bit... so it was good to reconnect... even under the circumstance.
Long story short... dont join this "linkedin network on my earlier email alone! I am not currently endorsing it...dont see myself using it as much as my personal networking sites like the facebook or tribe type sites!
sorry!
I would like to take linkedin to court coz they hve retained my information even after i removed my account
Please let me knwo who else wants to join me and file a lawsuit against them
my dad is a lawyer and i would love to take them to cleaners
I live in Canada
Email me at kkate@yahoo.com
rose on May 20, 2008 4:59 AMCan anyone in the mean time tell me how to replace / delete infor from linkedin after the account has been deactivated- closed
rose
rose on May 20, 2008 5:00 AMI use LinkedIn ALL THE TIME for business. This site is great because it connects you to other people you otherwise would not have run into. How many of us know what all of our friends friends do for a living? It has been a very beneficial networking tool for all of us, not just me, in the company. I personally have found two people that we have brought on a consultants to our business. I give this website two thumbs up. Brillant idea and can be very useful.
Pam on May 27, 2008 12:20 PMEveryone has reasons for not liking it but has anyone devised a list of what would make Linkedin good? What would be in there that isnt?
And who believes linkedin would use this to improve? Is there a wish list anywhere that they look?
Canenglander on May 30, 2008 9:23 AMI have to disagree ... for me it has worked. I joined linked in and have had many job leads, and several direct offers as a result.
My current job (been in role now 2.5 years) came directly as a head hunter approach form Linked In.
I run a team and 2 of those guys also got their jobs as a result of Linked In.
So it worked for me ...
Wow. Bitter. So don't use it! Don't waste your precious time. For me, I found my current and fabulous job via Linkedin. I've also found friends that I'd completely lost track of from my childhood, which has been fun. Some have found me.
While, yes, picking up the phone and sending emails are great, if you don't have the email address... that makes it hard. And not everyone is listed in a phone directory. I'm not. So Linkedin does work for some people. And that does not make me silly or stupid. I deserve to be taken seriously. You, however, I will never think of again. Have a nice day.
KJ on June 18, 2008 7:26 AMI've been trying to remove myself from linkedin for over 3 months. I deleted my profile but my name and some info still shows up in their directory. I've contacted them multiple times but still no resolution. I'm contemplating legal action at this point as I really need that info removed.
thanks
How to remove yourself from linkdedin?? on July 1, 2008 7:24 AMI believe that the arguments against LinkedIn are valid IF you simply view LinkedIn as a way to receive jobs offers. Remember the argument in behalf of Microsoft's Version Control program vs. Subversion as seen in another Coding Horror article? It's the same here: If you simply measure LinkedIn's usefulness on the basis of number of job offers, it's useless.
I really only use it for managing good contacts. I don't spam invitations to every person whose names I happen to recognized from a previous job or from a random class I took in college, but use it as a form of contact management.
Manager Tools, an excellent source for articles and podcasts for effective managers has a podcast related to preparation in case of a layoff. In the podcast, it is suggested that one should have at least 100 contacts on paper and that they need to up to date. How difficult would this be to actually have something like this on paper. Moreover, this contact list needs to be in a NEUTRAL place or at home, and not on a work computer. Anyone who has worked for a larger corporation or for any technology-related company and has been laid off knows that you are often escorted back to your desk after being laid off and that often times you are not even allowed to touch your computer (bye bye valuable Outlook address book). LinkedIn become that perfect list you always have with you with up-to-date names, contacts, etc.
I have a Facebook account but rarely use it. So many around do and play and do who knows what on there but I guess, I've just failed at being a Facebooker. I don't have time to use it, play games on it, tag photos, setup photo galleries, take quizzes, etc. and frankly, I just don't want to do that.
LinkedIn is a perfect place where I can connect with previous people who I have worked with, or who I studies with in school but that I frankly have no need to share games, quizzes, or pictures with. I simply want to know what they're up to and want them to know what I'm doing. If they are looking for someone with my background, then they can see my profile. I know that if I am hiring someone for a specific position, I would favor the one who I have known and interacted in the past over a candidate with the same background but of whom I know little or nothing at all.
Overall, the value of LinkedIn is not the number of good job offers you receive, it's the value of the information you make available for your contacts to see and the value of having up-to-date contacts in the business world and those contacts not just being limited to individuals in your company or field.
Flavio on July 15, 2008 2:07 AMLINKED SUCKS!!! After many attempts to with no customer service, they finally kicked me out of their site! Good! Prior to this - and ther reason for my complaint in the first place was that I was not able to access MY OWN connections and contacts! This was ridiculous! I told them that if unable to fix within 48 hours, I wanted to close my account. I then changed the name in my profile to Linked In Sucks so that everyone who looked at my profile would see it and I gave details as to why. I then proceeded to tell them that I would spread the word to all of my contacts and groups .... so I guess they thought they would close my account before I did that. Good luck to them because I will open so many fake accounts and spread the word like WILDFIRE! I have already spread the word to many of these people anyway and will continue to spread the word. Instead of fixing the problem with their lousy network, they just opted to close the account. REMEMBER...these are contacts that WE provide them with. These are not their contacts, so why are they charging people for their own contacts? Glad I did not upgrade. I would have paid for no service and lousy service from LinkedIn.
P. Hernandez on September 9, 2008 7:28 AMI 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.
Drea on September 26, 2008 2:41 AMIf 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....
Joe Green on November 14, 2008 8:35 AMHmmm.... 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!!
Jeff Atwood on November 15, 2008 6:31 AMjoe obviously is a white male
kk on November 23, 2008 6:20 AMFor 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.
Jennifer C. on December 2, 2008 1:27 AMps - 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.
Jennifer C. on December 2, 2008 1:35 AMi 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 $20 fees.
Hope this helps.
Cancel Linkedin on January 4, 2009 11:45 AMmy name's rich
richard antwi on January 19, 2009 8:15 AMmy name's rich
checkout how not to use linkedin@ http://www.duktu.com/blog/?p=16
duktu on February 11, 2009 3:16 AMI had a 20$ 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.
JED on February 23, 2009 5:50 AMThere 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.
Sara on March 12, 2009 8:19 AMThe 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.
Kim on March 16, 2009 12:41 PMYep, 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.
Jeff on April 3, 2009 7:38 AMI 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.
teddy on May 4, 2009 7:39 AM100% 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.
Sergey Rusak on June 9, 2009 2:49 AMFirst, 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
Dorian on June 15, 2009 8:49 AMLinkedin 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.
1. How many people sign up for internet subscriptions and will forget about it.
2. How many people will give up if you make it hard for them to cancel their subscription
3. How much money they will make from the % of people who sign up who fall into the above category.
4. 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.
Beprint on July 15, 2009 1:15 PMI just tried to cancel and they grabbed another month "as per the TOS you agreed to".
Sadly I didn't see these comments before subscribing to send one email. :(
Fuck you LinkedIn. Get ready for the chargebacks.
Pissed Off on July 31, 2009 6:36 AMI have yet to see much benefit from LinkedIn either. I begrudgingly joined about a year ago, then dutifully added my info / contacts (as you did). It does seem like a nice way (initially) to organize your "network" and remember folks you worked with that you can no longer remember. But I have yet to experience a single meaningful benefit that transcends simply keeping track of contacts manually. The "discussions" and "social" stuff they kicked off generally only features marketing / self-promotional updates from folks.
Don't feel the desire to opt-out. But your findings from three years ago seem to be largely true today.
TravisV on August 16, 2009 11:42 AMNo, I can't point to any practical benefit from LinkedIn, but I think the idea is a good one.
The whole idea of LinkedIn is that it can let you know of contacts that you may not know about. Of course I wouldn't want to cold call a distant LinkedIn contact I'd never met. It's good to know if someone I know well has a contact that I'd like an introduction to. As someone who has reviewed more resumes than any human should have to do, I know the value of a recommendation to both the applicant and the hiring manager. I've held five programming positions in the past nine years, and four of them came from recommendations from friends or former co-workers. Most of them were kind of random occurrences. LinkedIn seems to be an attempt to allow us to be a little more intentional about friend of a friend recommendations.
Plus, it's an easy way for me to keep up with where my friends are working.
Jon Galloway on February 6, 2010 9:52 PMI use LinkedIn minimally, I only visit when:
1. One of my friends discover LinkedIn and sends me link request. When this happens, I read it as "When I change my contact info, find the update at LinkedIn."
2. when I need latest contact info of a friend I want to contact.
Also, if you leave your profile pretty much blank like I do, you won't receive link request spams.
Don Park on February 6, 2010 9:52 PMLi-what?
I agree with you Jeff - if someone wants to contact me, they can e-mail me or, better yet, pick up the phone. I ignore every invitation to every social networking site, because all that they do is add yet another layer of indirection to human communication. If a "friend" is too lazy to actually contact me and strike up a conversation, why exactly should I feel compelled to fill out a form for him/her? I deal with enough bureaucracy from the government and phone company, thankyouverymuch.
I think that even ordinary (non-geek) people are becoming less willing and less able to communicate like functioning human beings. People use the text messaging on their cell phones instead of dialing the number. And they use MSN/AIM at home instead of picking up the phone there. Now e-mail is somehow becoming too personal and people would rather exchange offline messages using a clever pseudonym at a silly forum or web site.
I say, to hell with it. If this is what passes for a friend/associate these days, I'm not interested. And I'd rather make one phone call to one friend and meet them downtown for the afternoon than spend the entire day at home sending impersonal messages back and forth to people who I presumably lost touch with for a good reason. Or people who I don't even know.
Aaron G on February 6, 2010 9:52 PMHave gotten lots of benefits from LinkedIn. Both through actually using the system to connect to people or organizations and to evaulate people applying for jobs; and by using the visibility it gives you into your friend's network to figure out the best person to ask for an introduction or recommendation outside LinkedIn (without having to spam everyone you know).
Think it's incredibly valuable for anyone who needs to find a job, make contacts at a particular organization, or who does hiring.
If you don't do any of those things, you're right it's probably not worth your time. But if you do have those needs and don't see the value, you're probably not leveraging the service effectively.
Gordon Strause on February 6, 2010 9:52 PMIt's been useful for to get in touch with old friends where I previously only had an out-of-date mobile number or email. I've also used the service to manually search for people I'd lost touch with.
But, I have to agree - the service hasn't helped me at all professionally.
Everton Blair on February 6, 2010 9:52 PMBack when I first encountered LinkedIn, I found it was pretty useless to me. Now, while I'm conducting a job search, I've discovered how to make it useful... not as a primary contact point or job-finding mechanism, but as a supplement to the other things I do. So... how exactly am I using it?
Here are my Top 10 rules:
1- LinkedIn is for my professional life only. I consciously avoid links between ANY sites that cross over between professional and personal. That plus judicious use of privacy settings everywhere... well, it doesn't completely separate the two, but it helps.
2- My only LinkedIn contacts are people that I know and respect, and that I believe respect and value my skills.
3- I categorize my contacts carefully: colleagues, partners, etc. Those who are just "friends" are few, and only accepted into my network as a courtesy; they are not actively sought out.
4- I use the contact system as it was meant to be used. That means asking for invitations, not sending requests to people I don't know. Other professionals respect this and respond positively to introductions. (If folks are very slow to provide introductions, I'll use the telephone to prompt them. This almost always works -- because of #2 and #3, I have or can easily get access to phone numbers.)
5- My LinkedIn profile is basically my resume. The public URL is printed on my personal business card.
6- I use "box.com" to provide links on my profile page where interested parties can download a PDF copy of my real resume, and important documents I've written and published elsewhere.
7a- I actively ask for recommendations from key people in my career history who will give me strong, well-written references. I gently advise if there are grammatical errors or misspellings, and I make sure the recommendation isn't "damning with faint praise." I only display references that will advance my career.
7b- When interviewers or recruiters ask for references early on, I point them to my LinkedIn recommendations. This almost always suffices. This lets me protect my managerial references from being bothered; I provide a means to speak with them only when someone is nearly ready to make an offer.
[BTW, yes, you can do #5-7 by having your own standalone website. Not sure if that is a better approach or not.]
8- I link all my other job search accounts or profiles back to my LinkedIn profile, and to each other, as far as is possible.
9- I actively search for internal contacts at places I think I'd like to work, and ask for introductions. I can find out what it's really like to work there; I can make new professional contacts; often I can get an internal referral directly to the hiring manager. (For internal referrals, I encourage complete honesty: "I've only recently met the guy online and really don't know him, but you might want to take a look and maybe interview him." I am often surprised at how this small thing still propels my resume towards the front of the list.)
10- I don't join every group I can. I do join the groups for my professional affiliations (such as IEEE and ACM). I am also judicious about which group memberships I allow to be publicly visible on my profile: only those which ought to appear on a resume.
[Of course, besides all this, I also use LinkedIn to keep track of people's contact information when it changes, but others have already discussed how they do that.]
I just had my fill of LinkedIn. Maybe it helps some folks, but not me.
The article indicates they create profiles without people's permission or solicitation. My recent experience is, they do the same with duplicate profiles. I already had a profile, and they created a duplicate somehow without my consent. Someone shot me in invite using one of those unknown duplicate profiles. That invite appeared in my email. I clicked the link, and it took me to a page with an error message indicating that my email was not associated with the account. I am not able to find my duplicate profiles so I can delete them. They probably don't even have my first or last name on them.
On the page where the error is displayed, they also have an option for me to send them my email password so they can rummage through my email account. Lovely.
CS is no help. They just tell me what I already know from the FAQ's; i.e., I may have duplicates. I tell them I have no duplicates, but they don't address the real problem, which is I shouldn't be getting these invites that don't work.
Jasonc65 on September 19, 2011 9:45 AMThe comments to this entry are closed.
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