What happened to LinkedIn?

I never shared an opinion on LinkedIn before. Anywhere online, actually. Even though, I've written dozens of articles I eventually wanted to post on my blog; which incidentally I built, wrote on, but also, never launched publicly either. I've been reading a lot lately, and it's time to go from motion to action (Atomic Habits by James Clear) and to show "work" (Show Your Work by Austin Kleon). What's the worst that can happen, right?

Let me start with a question. Am I the only one who finds LinkedIn has lost any interest? I remember when I first got on LinkedIn, it felt like it was the place to be for a young professional starter. It would enable me to connect with people I had met during meetings or events and foolishly I thought also to discuss and stay in touch with them. Who knew what nice opportunity may arise from it? I only sent invites to people I had met in real life. Also, all the requests that I received were from people I had met at one point during my life or short career. Evidently, the next step to have a profile with potential was to reach that "+500" connections badge.

So what's the problem you may ask? That all sounds like a good start. Well, here's the clincher: my two major issues with LinkedIn are; today, either someone wants to connect to sell you something or it's head-hunter mass-dumping pseudo-professional opportunities without reading your actual profile or CV. I understand there is a need for business development and LinkedIn seems like the right place to start. Especially now COVID-19 has made it impossible to connect at events. However, for some reason, random strangers always reach out like they are my best friends and as if they've known me for years and we used to drink pints together at the pub. Why? Probably because they ran my profile through a semantic analytics app such as Crystal Knows or through IBM's Watson Tone Analyser. The outcoming results were that I'm an outgoing, friendly, direct, challenging, and empowering person who has outwardly directed energy and who doesn't act or see the need for hierarchical distance, and who enjoys more informal ways of interacting and doing business (these are actual results from those apps). While the results are scarily accurate and I always try to be friendly to everyone, the tool fails to understand this is who am I when I'm with people I know. With colleagues or friends. Not with random strangers who try to sound like they're my friends or are overly direct and challenging in order to promote their content or make me buy their products because that's how the program assessed me.

The other issue, of what I originally thought would be a great added value of LinkedIn, was the new professional opportunities. When I started on LinkedIn, I was under the impression there were so many head-hunters scouting the platform for new or interesting talent to recruit. Boy, was I right about all the opportunities I would receive in my inbox. Unfortunately, for me, at least, very few were real actual opportunities as most of the "recruiters" mass dumped their pseudo opportunity because I believe none of them actually took the time to read my profile or the actual role I was in at that given moment. Offers for Junior Account or Junior Digital Manager could be interesting if you're still at the start of your career or are currently in similar roles. They're much less interesting when you are currently holding a director's role about 2 to 3 layers above the "Amazing opportunity in a top-tier-whatever-company". I'm honestly asking myself why they even take the time or why they pay to send these out so out of target? To be fair, not all recruiters are like that, but only very few offers that I would consider a true opportunity were sent through LinkedIn Messages. Whenever I got a real opportunity, the recruiter had actually found my current private mail address or mobile number and reached out directly with decent knowledge of my background and profile.

Now you may ask "OK, but what are you doing on LinkedIn, then?". And that's a great question. I've been asking myself the same thing. When I started, even when I reached the 500+ connections badge, I really had met every single one of them and thought: you may never know when this may come in handy? To be fair, I'm still waiting for that occasion to arise, because whenever I'm in real need of something, I have that person in my phone book and I call or text them. On top of that, you can't just go and DM someone you haven't spoken to in ages just because you need something? At least, that's not who I am. Still, for some reason, I'm not leaving this media and for one reason only: What would HR people think of me if I ever wanted to change employers and they can't find me on LinkedIn? How weird would that be? Would that have any influence on my potential recruiting? I'm not on LinkedIn therefore I don't exist? I honestly don't know and it's probably an irrational reason, but it's kept me on LinkedIn for the moment and despite all the reasons above will probably keep me here for another moment...

Maybe all these unpleasantries only happened to me. However, maybe they also happened to you? I'd love to hear your stories about recruiters and overly eager business developers reaching out to you. Or, just tell me I'm plain wrong and I don't understand how all of this actually works (I am conscious I'm not using multiple other LinkedIn features, such as article (which I needed to use to post this as I'm exceeding the character limit and which I'm considering using depending on the feedback of this post), groups or other discussion possibilities).

Either way, I'd love to read and learn about your experiences. Don't hesitate to share and comment below.

-Kevin