LinkedIn - Total waste of time

[TykeMerc]

Then don't accept in the first place FFS!

And if you accept and then find they fill your timeline with said bulltulip bingo, remove them from your connections.

Every few months I regularly cull any agent who hasn't been useful to me. It's not rocket science.

What Cojak Said!

I don't understand why anyone wants endless connections, I only invite or accept requests from people I've worked with and know, I did have a couple of Agents on there, I probably clicked the invite mails wrongly, I removed them.

The endless farming of connections is just like the morons who claim they have 2,000 "friends" on Faceparty it's some kind of perverse scoreboard with no value at all to anyone rational.

Oh and Aussielong if you actually hate it then remove your profile, not difficult and won't cost you anything as you don't use it do you?

[AnotherGuy]

Well, I use LinkedIn but on my own terms.

For example, I never accept agencies, recruiters or similar that send me connect requests out of the blue. I only accept people I've worked with personally and I know who they are.

Also, I don't do recommendations and I've disabled this on my profile so nobody can write recommendations there.
The same for the skills thingy or endorsements. I've disabled that because is total bulltulip.

To be honest I get a lot of messages via LinkedIn but most of them are just keyword spam, so I just ignore them without even replying. I reply only if I feel they are genuine.

[Zero Liability]

Some agencies have gotten in the habit of using it to list contract roles, rather than their own websites, so I use it for that purpose, but over and above that, I don't frequent it much. The attempt to turn it into Facebook 2.0 doesn't sit well with me.

[Andy2]

I've picked up my last 3 contracts from LinkedIn and haven't paid a penny for it.

How does that work exactly. Did agents find you on LI or you contacted them or did you use job search function on there, which btw is a pain if you are only looking for contracts and not permie job.

[cojak]

Everyone contacted me. The one before last was an ex-client (I still had to go through their preferred supplier agency though).

[squarepeg]

If you fill in your profile in a half-decent way the agents will find you. What you do then is entirely up to you. I worked on the team that worked on the integration of their platform with the LinkedIn API and got to know the difference between standard and pro quite well. My short answer to the question of whether it is worth paying for a Pro account as a contractor is "no". People use it in many ways besides finding jobs, my Polish colleague connects with every Vietnamese agent with a name that reads or sounds like the Polish equivalents of the seven dirty words. He's got quite a collection now. I used to collect screenshots of the profiles of junior agents who thought that posting a profile pic a) taken after a couple pints in a pub when she was dressed as a cheap working girl or b) taken with a wide angle lens magnifying the tattoos on his arm, are going to convince me to add them to my list of connections. Quite a menagerie, wish I made a page with google ads on it and posted that on Hacker News.

In short, keep your profile current, don't pay, have a laugh when you spot an idiot, and only reply to those people that talk to you in a reasonable way and may have something of interest for you. Simple.

[Eirikur]

Got a few jobs through LI as well. It also helps when you post that you're available, loads of agencies call whenever I do that.

[TheFaQQer]

Current client approached me directly because my headline said I was available.

Three years and counting - never paid for anything on LinkedIn, but if I had it would have paid for itself many, many, many times over.

[LondonManc]

Some agencies have gotten in the habit of using it to list contract roles, rather than their own websites, so I use it for that purpose, but over and above that, I don't frequent it much. The attempt to turn it into Facebook 2.0 doesn't sit well with me.

Totally agree. It's meant to be a professional website. It could become so much more and a way to get around agencies if ClientCos looked at using it properly.

[uk contractor]

It can work for & or against you. I dislike it immensely as some agencies see your employer history then proceed to contact them without your permission even when your still in a contract & not yet spoken to them about leaving or extending!

For that alone I would not use it at all. I know people who have used it to get contracts but also many who like me set everything to private or friends only as so many lazy inexperienced agents misuse it to try & generate leads.

Someone told me recently its the facebook of IT contractors...... Big problem with the recruitment industry is not enough standard codes of practice are enforced are they!