Title says it all. I’m currently in the job market in tech. It’s brutal to say the least. The biggest issue I’m facing is the LinkedIn requirement. I consider LinkedIn social media and I have gotten off of social media. I did create a LinkedIn last year but I haven’t put any personal info on it. The privacy settings or just settings in general is unbelievable. Took me like 40 minutes to read through all of their toggles and disable them, no joke.
I get jobs want to block bots and AI applicants but I kinda feel like that rules out anyone that wants privacy. What if I was in witsec ? In all seriousness, what are victims of dv going to do if they have to have social media to get a job?
Are people’s only options either get a LinkedIn and add your info or only apply to places that don’t require it (seems to be fewer and fewer these days)?
I used to work in an industry where LinkedIn was very common for networking and finding jobs. I had a profile because it was advantageous to do so, but I took the following steps to protect my privacy;
Account registered and verified with a disposable email and VOIP number. I’m not sure if this is possible today because a lot of companies have cracked down people verifying accounts this way.
Profile name was my first name and last initial. Instead of setting my location to a specific city, ie: Seattle, Washington, I just had it say the State I was working out of. I had a picture of myself but it was a headshot that I had professionally done and only ever used for LinkedIn so it couldn’t be reverse image searched to my social media accounts (when I did have those).
I only followed and interacted with work related stuff. I was working in physical/corporate security at the time so I followed a lot of big name security organizations like Kroll, Control Risks, Pinkerton, Constellis, etc. I also followed vendors that we used. I only connected with people I actually knew or people who were big names in the industry. Like I said I basically only used it for networking and job searching. I never used it for anything personal (connecting with friends, following their businesses, etc).
Many people will say that you should avoid LinkedIn, but sometimes it really is the only way to find jobs in certain career fields. It sucks but it is what it is. Just try your best to be smart when using it to limit your digital footprint.
What they did in the past was tests, face-to-face interviews, and background checks, with the permission of the applicant and companies covering the costs, and/or employers asking applicants to submit various requirements, like police clearances, academic and training records, and recommendations from others.
Given that, you will need to look for companies that are still willing to do things this way.
To me, LinkedIn was never an interesting place to find quality jobs in the first place.
It is quite a cringe platform with a good amount of AI slop, nonsense corpo and ads/nonsense in every direction.
The only good useful-ish situation for LinkedIn is visibility to find some jobs.
Some specific job boards can be fine but LinkedIn definitely has more traffic overall.
That is also a huge issue overall because recruiters are actually flooded by AI applications and they hence need to use AI to filter through that noise.
So overall…look for an interesting company but then go directly to their company’s website or even better, reach out to one of their people from there if you can.
By far the best to cut through the noise and get yourself shortlisted.
Networking definitely helps but letting your friends know that you’re looking for a job is also a good start usually because you could maybe forward that directly to you.
I think networking will be the biggest helper for people. Just saw a post that required a phone number, linkedin, and github profile. Not sure what the future holds for hiring. Seems like it’ll be all referrals which is kinda where we are now. Or I don’t know, maybe we’ll start dropping off resumes in person again .
Don’t network exclusively on LinkedIn. Swap phone numbers with people. Make real connections at work or school, not purely transactional. People are more apt to help friends and those who are present.
I’m actually taking a wager myself and deleted my LinkedIn recently. I suspect this will hurt me should I need a new job, and there’s a chance I’ll need to go back to it. However, my LinkedIn was a glorified resume, and all it could verify is my existing social network on LinkedIn. If it’s only serving as a resume, then I honestly would bet I wasn’t getting much use out of it anyway.
I haven’t been in the market for a bit myself, but sucks to see social media as a requirement. Since when does job applications require a vendor lock to in? But AI spam and applications make for a more.. interesting world to be I .
Yes my questions have been addressed. i’m still learning the rules here. is there a way to close the question? i found everyone’s input valuable. do i have to pick a solution?
yea i don’t use linkedin at all. i just made an account to fulfill the application requirement. i think i’m going to give up with the cold applies and lean exclusively on my network for referrals. congrats for deleting linkedin. i’m sure your network is already big enough to not need it in the future.
This meanwhile is not a thing in EU.
And I quite like the fact that phone numbers is not the default behavior.
Make yourself a quick website honestly.
It’s just a better way to be short-listed honestly.
Some recruiters are also just extremely lazy and rather add tools than create their owns.
I guess we have mixed ages on this forum, some people still being at school while others in active life for a decade, it makes very opinionated comments.
? In all seriousness, what are victims of dv going to do if they have to have social media to get a job?
but I appreciate your positivity.
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