On Linked

I’ve been trying to figure out LinkedIn, and I find it a genuinely difficult platform. It differs from Facebook, Instagram, X, and YouTube in that ordinary people’s livelihoods depend on it; there are some telling statistics here about how many recruiters rely on it exclusively to find talent (even though a whole industry of jobs never reaches the open market), so it’s something you have to learn inside and out to land good work, whatever your field. The book lays the praise for LinkedIn on a bit thick, but I came away convinced the platform isn’t quite the ground zero of the job search after all. It matters — most job-seekers need a profile, and many jobs are posted there — but it’s really an algorithmic tool, sold to recruiters rather than to job-seekers, for enhancing your professional network: reaching out to people, seeing whom you have in common, finding out what your alumni are up to, and researching organizations. As has been said many times, getting a job is overwhelmingly about who you know, and the hunt is far easier when your reputation precedes you. For all that it’s about LinkedIn, Garriott and Schifeling give much better advice for networking introverts than Matthew Pollard does in his book — their sample lines sound far more human than “I am the market maven and I am at your service.” For anyone on the job market, or about to be, this is the one to start with.