What is LinkedIn good for, beyond spamming strangers? Do people actually get jobs on there?
LinkedIn is that unlikely contradiction: the social network that’s all business. No one’s up late at night checking out their connections’ connections, or who endorsed who and for what. You log in about once a month, you accept the “invitations to connect” from a handful of strangers, and you log out. And you’re sent, on average, 1.75 emails a day for the privilege.
At least that’s not about the extent of my own engagement. As far as social media housekeeping goes, maintaining my LinkedIn is the equivalent of cleaning the cutlery drawers, or wiping down lightbulbs – you do it irregularly and perfunctorily because someone told you to, not because there’s any obvious benefit.
But it seems I may have underestimated LinkedIn – at least by numbers. It has half a billion members, about 180m fewer than Twitter, with 319m monthly active users as of February. And think of all the words, energy and analysis given over to tweets. (One word: covfefe.)
The platform says each new connection extends the reach of your professional network by an average of 400 people, 100 companies and more than 500 jobs. It all sounds like a bit much to expect of my ex-girlfriend’s dad and my high school English teacher, both of whom invited me to connect three years ago – but who am I to close any potential doors?
To use Seinfeld terminology, LinkedIn feels a little like the Bizarro Facebook, where instead of births and engagements people publicise their “microactions” and “thought leadership”. One consultant with a large following described herself as “the Michael Bay of business”. Fleetingly, I wondered: would anyone buy that I was the Michael Bay of journalism?
LinkedIn is that kind of place – “a wasteland of endless management consultants congratulating each other”, to quote one correspondent.
“It’s not a healthy environment,” someone else messaged me. “There’s an excess focus on simulating optimism and excitement, rather than clear-headed discussion on issues. It’s like a giant, living, breathing resume, complete with bad formatting, plasticised optimism and synthetic relationships.
“It’s the worst of social media, combined with the worst of corporate culture, combined with the worst of website design. I hate it, but I have to also pretend to love it for my own work and to communicate with my industry.”
He concluded by asking me not to name him: “I’m actually on the lookout for jobs, and my clients are pretty keen on LinkedIn!”
Many people I spoke to – across a wide range of sectors, including business, finance, energy, automotive and telecom – shared his sense of resignation. LinkedIn wasn’t necessarily their platform of choice, but that’s where their industries were. The user experience was singled out as frustrating – not to mention the spam, with one user urging others to be “super-careful” about invitations to connect: “Press the wrong button and your friends get pestered for eternity.”
“I don’t know any companies that don’t use LinkedIn to spam their products or services,” said someone else, who works in the start-up sector.
Over the years LinkedIn became more of a copy of Facebook, at least there you know what you are posting is not making sense to some people or not even taken seriously. LinkedIn, is since the last years a network which people showing how good they in their job, making a promotion or asking for recommendations, but are these recommendations grounded on the reality?
So basically, what is the difference between Facebook and LinkedIn?
Influencers
As some of you can remember is that LinkedIn launched the Influencer program in Oct. 2012 allowing 150 so-called “thought leaders” to share their original content directly with us LinkedIn plebs. They did this because their social news platform “LinkedIn Today” launched the year prior, was in dire need of something fresher than the soggy old news of aggregated content, which could be read and shared by members. The Influencer program soon expanded to (approximately) 500 leaders (with thoughts) and is flexible. LinkedIn says “We regularly evaluate existing Influencers to include only the most engaged, prolific, and thoughtful contributors and to ensure that their expertise matches our members’ interests.” So keep giving us the good stuff and earn your keep Mr/Ms Influencer. Don’t bother bothering LinkedIn to get on the list, they’ll call you.
So, are these influencers writing their text themselves? What do you think, that fact is that these influencers have people who are creating and writing these topics for them, or did you really think that Mr. Richard Branson is writing his own content for LinkedIn, to name one?
Now let’s get to the main points of this blog.
I wrote some time a blog post asking for assistance to help me out for a new opportunity from my fellow LinkedIn Connections, the result was embarrassing! And I admit, I did not even got one email from anyone, so would you call LinkedIn still part of a “Professional Social Network”?
My lovely wife, was a few years by accident infected duo a hospital visit with HIV, this effected our total family and friends. In despite of this struggle which I not want that anybody has to go true, I thought we had the worst behind us, but nevertheless was true.
On December 5th, I got the message that Darkmatter llc was being sold to the Abu Dhabi Holding and that there would be a new name for the company namely Digital14, which would operate under the Edge Group under the umbrella from the holding. The former Ceo would have a new position, as yes, you guest it already, the new CEO of Digital14, this time under a permanent contract as employee of the holding, so their solution was to terminated all contractors under the excuse of the Emiratisation .
So there we were standing all alone and once again looking out for a new assignment, which became also a struggle, recruitment agencies in the UAE, who did not reply on responses on their open and urgent vacancies? You know, it is like you are standing in a mud pool and slowly going down under, like we did not yet faced more than enough problems the past last years.
Let me explain my LinkedIn connections something else, even in this current bad position, whenever someone was reaching out to me to assist Him/Her to assist finding another position, I was always there and, in most cases, I had a success rate of 99% to find them another role. And no, there was not even mention for a fee, this was a “social jester” to help my connection(s) out, which is the main reason of this network, helping each other whenever we can, is that not the meaning of a Professional Business Social Network?
Reading all the above, I want to reach out to all of you, to ask for “YOUR URGENT ASSISTANCE” ,if you know maybe a possible new role for me, my family and me, would highly appreciate this from your side and will not go by unnoticed you can count on this for sure.
You can reach me always on the following media:
Website: https://hjinterim.com
Whatsapp: +971521634441
Mobile: +971521634441
LinkedIn: Profile
Email: dr.henkjan.jansen@hjinterim.com
Skype: dr.henk.jan.jansen@outlook.com
