Slightly off topic. I've had exactly one consulting engagement come from LinkedIn, back in 2013. Someone met with a VC, was told they needed a Ruby on Rails developer, found me, and it was off to the races. That was it. No lead since, in any format. I paid for Premium for a while and eventually stopped.
I have connections, and friends occasionally like a comment when I share something. I'm convinced LinkedIn demotes anything that links off-platform, even in the comments. That makes it really hard to share a good blog post.
Honestly, I get more engagement on Facebook. My mom and in-person friends find what I do slightly interesting, at least when the algorithm decides to show it. Same story there, though. Links to a blog get buried compared to native content.
I got my current job (which I love and am being paid incredibly well for) by cold-firing a DM to someone at the company who I thought would be responsive who then put me down as a referral.
It's a whole song-and-dance, absolutely. The 'game' is to post enough (once/twice a week) with genuine, non-AI generated content to get your co-workers liking your posts and engaging. General, pro-social musings about layoffs, coworkers, job prospects, etc.
Recruiters started hitting me up fairly quickly after I started doing this even with my paltry engagement numbers (5k~ views per post) - half a dozen DMs a week for pretty decent roles in my city while I kept it up (and still a handful now after I stopped posting). And it also made my profile relatively 'attractive' for hiring managers, too, which is to say I didn't seem like a total sociopath with anger problems.
It helps that code-switching is pretty easy for me given my personal history so it doesn't feel like I'm somehow fundamentally betraying who I am by posting fluffy things on one social media platform. I imagine if you're more sensitive about your identity or how you engage socially, it can be very difficult to put any effort into your LI profile. If you've never had to put on a mask to fit in then the first wear can be very uncomfortable.
Yeah, in part my issue is recruiters are completely unaligned with my interests. Anytime I have ever replied that I am available for a corp-to-corp consulting contract the contact dies. They are only about placing people in full time employment, which has been an anathema to me because to do that I would have to turn my back on all my current clients and leave them high and dry. Growing the business has always been the better path for me.
I'm convinced LinkedIn demotes anything that links off-platform
Interesting...why do you think that? I was on LI the other day and it struck me that probably half my feed was "look at this thing on this other site". Admittedly, the link was usually under the fold in the comments, which maybe is a cheat code to get around some real or perceived blockage? Not that any sort of user-hostile behavior from LI would surprise me, I just made a mental note of it at the time.
I have not run a controlled study, but I have shared topics here on this website that made it to the front page quickly and had a lively comment section and on LinkedIn the same was had very limited impression numbers. I did an experiment with an ATLRUG announcement where I did not include the URL and the numbers were slightly higher than one that did, but still not great. I have connections on the platform with relevant interests but its not showing it to them.
One thing that has always hurt me is I have never once in my career been on the traditional job market. I was self employed as a teenager and have always just kept growing and pivoting and growing. I have never sought or taken a job via the normal market. LinkedIn has always been a bit of a odd place for that mode of work.
> I'm convinced LinkedIn demotes anything that links off-platform
This has been proven, they absolutely penalize off site links. The workaround is to put it in the comments, which they do not demote (yet). But engagement still matters for appearing on feeds. If you're not saying something controversial, you probably won't get a lot of engagement.
As someone who sometimes helps companies figure out content strategy, I am sorry to say that it is not true that linking in comments is safe -- this tends to penalize your post nowadays.
LinkedIn isn't alone here -- virtually every platform with an algorthmic feed penalizes both links and the obvious workarounds.
Not to defend the practice -- it's unfortunate because it trains younger users that attribution isn't important, it enables and incentivizes outright theft of content (good luck chasing down original sources after convincing yourself that it wasn't AI in the first place)
I've got my current, amazing, job from a recruiter cold messaging on LinkedIn. Honestly for job seeking, from what I could gather among my laid off colleagues, it's very decent. None of us had any real LinkedIn activity either, except filling in the profile and job history
rietta · · focus · HN ↗
I have connections, and friends occasionally like a comment when I share something. I'm convinced LinkedIn demotes anything that links off-platform, even in the comments. That makes it really hard to share a good blog post.
Honestly, I get more engagement on Facebook. My mom and in-person friends find what I do slightly interesting, at least when the algorithm decides to show it. Same story there, though. Links to a blog get buried compared to native content.
paimapi · · focus · HN ↗
It's a whole song-and-dance, absolutely. The 'game' is to post enough (once/twice a week) with genuine, non-AI generated content to get your co-workers liking your posts and engaging. General, pro-social musings about layoffs, coworkers, job prospects, etc.
Recruiters started hitting me up fairly quickly after I started doing this even with my paltry engagement numbers (5k~ views per post) - half a dozen DMs a week for pretty decent roles in my city while I kept it up (and still a handful now after I stopped posting). And it also made my profile relatively 'attractive' for hiring managers, too, which is to say I didn't seem like a total sociopath with anger problems.
It helps that code-switching is pretty easy for me given my personal history so it doesn't feel like I'm somehow fundamentally betraying who I am by posting fluffy things on one social media platform. I imagine if you're more sensitive about your identity or how you engage socially, it can be very difficult to put any effort into your LI profile. If you've never had to put on a mask to fit in then the first wear can be very uncomfortable.
rietta · · focus · HN ↗
Yeah, in part my issue is recruiters are completely unaligned with my interests. Anytime I have ever replied that I am available for a corp-to-corp consulting contract the contact dies. They are only about placing people in full time employment, which has been an anathema to me because to do that I would have to turn my back on all my current clients and leave them high and dry. Growing the business has always been the better path for me.
paimapi · · focus · HN ↗
kjs3 · · focus · HN ↗
Interesting...why do you think that? I was on LI the other day and it struck me that probably half my feed was "look at this thing on this other site". Admittedly, the link was usually under the fold in the comments, which maybe is a cheat code to get around some real or perceived blockage? Not that any sort of user-hostile behavior from LI would surprise me, I just made a mental note of it at the time.
rietta · · focus · HN ↗
One thing that has always hurt me is I have never once in my career been on the traditional job market. I was self employed as a teenager and have always just kept growing and pivoting and growing. I have never sought or taken a job via the normal market. LinkedIn has always been a bit of a odd place for that mode of work.
__mharrison__ · · focus · HN ↗
BTW Twitter penalizes links as well.
rietta · · focus · HN ↗
jedberg · · focus · HN ↗
This has been proven, they absolutely penalize off site links. The workaround is to put it in the comments, which they do not demote (yet). But engagement still matters for appearing on feeds. If you're not saying something controversial, you probably won't get a lot of engagement.
vector_spaces · · focus · HN ↗
LinkedIn isn't alone here -- virtually every platform with an algorthmic feed penalizes both links and the obvious workarounds.
Not to defend the practice -- it's unfortunate because it trains younger users that attribution isn't important, it enables and incentivizes outright theft of content (good luck chasing down original sources after convincing yourself that it wasn't AI in the first place)
hn8726 · · focus · HN ↗