LinkedIn has garnered the reputation of being the world’s largest professional networking site, with 300 million members in more than 200 countries. Having a LinkedIn account is considered to be absolutely necessary for networking and recruitment. But how relevant and useful is it really in today’s professional world?
I’d like to tell you why everything you’ve assumed about LinkedIn is false and why it is, in fact, a very overrated networking tool.
What LinkedIn Claims to Do
LinkedIn was created with the intention of bringing job seekers and employers together, as well as to help provide a framework for people to connect and to provide opportunities for professional learning, nurturing and mentoring, as well as development.
Technically, it’s supposed to be driven by people’s own connections and recommendations. Unfortunately, several things have rendered it less than useful. LinkedIn just does not stand up to what it claims. Consider these points:
LinkedIn Spams
This has resulted in a drop in valuation for the website. LinkedIn emails are routed through third-party servers, which are very difficult to control; this results in spamming. Filters are not very effective, and you can end up receiving multiple messages, which distracts you from your other email and ends up wasting your valuable time.
Unlike Facebook and Google+, which have very effective spam filters, LinkedIn has poor ones and as a result, the spamming distracts from its original purpose. Many people dislike and have discontinued using LinkedIn on account of this very reason; instead of being an aid, it has morphed into a nuisance.
You Need a Large Network
LinkedIn is useful only if the candidate has many personal connections. There are usually many applicants for an advertised post, and given this competition factor, you can imagine how difficult your recruitment chances are going to be. Having some personal connections can greatly influence your chances. The more connections you have, the more chances you get of meeting recruiters who fit your career requirements. This makes the utility of LinkedIn lower if you’re just starting out and don’t have the contacts to latch onto.
LinkedIn’s Resume Builder Is Faulty and Useless
What LinkedIn advertises as their strength, i.e. their resume builder, is, frankly speaking, quite useless. The kind of resumes it generates are run-of-the-mill and don’t produce the kind of impact required to attract the attention of a potential recruiter. These resumes generally turn out to be faulty and lack many of the essentials a successful resume would need to pass the stringent screening of recruiters.
The resume builder creates more of a social profile of your general details than a proper resume and tends to be confused and hazy, lacking poor formatting. This is actually one of the most disappointing features of LinkedIn, considering they claim themselves to be the world’s largest professional networking site.
LinkedIn Endorsements Lack Value
One of the most attractive features of LinkedIn is its endorsements feature, which was introduced in 2012. It’s so popular the number of endorsements being done on LinkedIn is in millions per day. But how significant are these endorsements? How much value do they produce?
Reports have shown the actual is value is very low, as endorsements can be done with one click by anyone, including your friends and relatives. At the end of the day, having a large number of LinkedIn endorsements doesn’t not count at all, as endorsements by people who are not really up to mark in your particular industry or who don’t have the requisite level of achievements can actually have a negative effect on your professional reputation.
LinkedIn is Not Small Business-Friendly
The power of LinkedIn is for big businesses and those who have a lot of connections. LinkedIn is not useful for those who are starting out on their own, which includes startups, entrepreneurs, independent workers such as freelancers and small-scale business owners.
LinkedIn is just another social networking site where you have to use your existing social connections to push up the ladder, and in that sense, it is no different from real-life networking. For newcomers and independent workers, it can be challenging to obtain a new job, project or assignment through LinkedIn. It’s better to use your real-life contacts and do real-life marketing to get your business working, since in all likelihood, you won’t be able to make the kind of useful contacts you need through LinkedIn. (Tweet this thought.)
In Conclusion
Based on these factors, I would argue that LinkedIn is more about hype than about any actual value actually conferred on the user. It’s not of use to those who really need a helping hand in their career trajectory or their entry into entrepreneurial ventures.
Not only that, many privacy concerns have led users to gradually abandon the use of LinkedIn as it compromises user privacy for the expansion of its own business by methods such as payment to know who viewed your profile.
Have you found LinkedIn to be worthwhile for your career, or has it been a waste of time for you? Let us know in the comments!
Image: Flickr
