zlacker

As a student its one of those things that you can't risk not having on your résumé. There's always one recruiter or one document-scraping application portal that could reject it. Plus every career counselor I've seen has suggested it.

I personally think that for software dev at least, making connections via Twitter or via friends is a better way to go for the first internship, but everyone has different paths to success :)

>>peterk+(OP)
FWIW, I've seen quite a few resumes of software engineers at this point and I would say less than half have LinkedIn on it.

"Can't risk" is interesting, you could say that about anything you could put on your resume if there's a chance it helps, but something like LinkedIn seems just redundant with your resume's content.

>>lucasm+34
When you are desperate looking for your first job or internship you probably don’t have a great grasp of the hiring process because of conflicting voices on how to get a job. Even if technical forums say don’t bother, career counselors and hr folks seem to place importance on LinkedIn, leading to the “can’t risk” attitude, especially if you don’t have a foot in the door.

>>peterk+(OP)
I graduated 4 years ago, and I never put my linkedin on my resume (actually deleted it a few years ago) and was never asked about it (nor was I ever turned down from an interview).

> Plus every career counselor I've seen has suggested it.

They're probably right, if your goal is to get a job as a career counselor.

>>centim+d7
Have you ever felt like you were missing anything? I also deleted mine a long time ago and the only thing I miss is an easy way to contact people that I don't follow on Twitter (I also don't have Facebook).

>>peterk+(OP)
I've used LI to get a few interviews, but not a job. I'm not in 'tech' per se (bio stuff), so for me it's a mixed bag.

If you are going to use it for a job hunt, then use it aggressively. Message/cold-call people that you want to work for, send them a cover letter and CV, ask to talk off LI and on the phone/over-coffee asap. Cold-emailing people from a company directory is kinda the same thing here. The 'rules' for Tinder aren't that far off for LI, sad as that is.

Outside of a job hunt that you're preforming, yeah, it's mostly recruiter spam. The feed is practically useless in my experience, but I am not a power user.

All that said, networking is that key to getting hired.

>>lucasm+34
I don't list my LinkedIn profile on my resume, but I have one and it's under the name used on my resume. Every time I've applied for a job, LI shows n people from $place_I_applied_to has viewed your profile recently.

So people definitely use it, even if it isn't on your resume.