Job-hunting on Linkedin: Recruiters, Groups and Networking, oh my!

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Job-hunting on Linkedin: Recruiters, Groups and Networking, oh my!

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Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Thoguh posted:

I'd heavily disagree on that. If you don't mind l my asking, what is your industry and experience level? You give your personal opinions as fact on here so you might as give a baseline for where you are coming from. What works for you doesn't automatically translate into a universal experience.

I'm about three and a half years out of college and two and a half years into a job.

The burden is really on you to demonstrate why a site based around professional networking and creating an online profile to act as and supplement your resume is not about advancing your career, which if you stop to consider is a ridiculous position to take. The demographics, the design, and the marketing clearly say otherwise. This discussion began as an offshoot of Premium selling itself as a way to connect with less restrictions.

# ¿ Jul 1, 2014 07:37

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 12:57

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Zeris posted:

My first experience being recruited:

I have a LinkedIn profile that lists "open to new opportunities" at the top because, well, it's true. That said, I do freelance writing & low-scale web design on the side to get by, so I'm not desperate for work. The opposite, in fact. I have long-term plans to go to graduate school in Fall 2015 regardless.

A recruiter from the Judge group connects with me and writes that she is finding technical writers for JP Morgan Chase, which has an office in my city. We talk over the phone and can't agree on a pay rate.

I wasn't sure of the relationship between this recruiter and JP Morgan Chase - I had no idea a recruiter would negotiate an hourly wage with me for a 1-year contracted position.

Anyway, I'm happy to give more information, but can anyone offer some insight on this process? We left it at a standoff - I wasn't willing to proceed below my desired pay rate, and she wasn't willing to go above hers. At one point she "had to talk to her supervisor" and bumped the offer by $1.50/hr, which reminded me of the buying process at a car dealership.

Is this all normal?

This is fairly normal. I've refused to be submitted for positions of less than X rate/hour and then had the recruiter's boss get on the phone with me and try to browbeat me into being submitted. That was when I knew I definitely wasn't going to be doing business with them.

Let's say they offered you $30 per hour. The assignment pays $35, the recruitment agency gets $5. They are not going to want to get less than $5 an hour, so if you are not going to go in for $31.50 an hour, there's no deal to be made at that point.

# ¿ Jul 13, 2014 20:40

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Please publish practical advice on real topics and not "What we can learn from the World Cup about leadership"

# ¿ Jul 16, 2014 01:28

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Just remember, it's ok to send a recruiter dick pics.

# ¿ Jul 17, 2014 18:38

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

It's almost like people use LinkedIn to spam bullshitty articles in attempt to increase page/profile views.

# ¿ Jul 24, 2014 17:27

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Omne posted:

So if I work in product management, and a recruiter from Amazon reaches out to me about a position in product management, it's probably legit? I have zero ties to Amazon, or the Pacific Northwest, or to the technology industry, and I've never had a recruiter hit me up on LinkedIn that wasn't a sales scam so I wasn't sure.

If they're taking the trouble, giving you details, using an official Amazon email, go ahead and look into it. Amazon is a large company and they don't restrict themselves to candidates from the Pacific Northwest.

Scam emails are really obvious.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2014 19:44

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

necrobobsledder posted:

I'll tell you who not to respond to besides the ones that scrape for the bottom of the barrel and shovel resources into a bag of sabotaged careers and broken dreams with mass blanket cold calls - desperate recruiters that are looking for IMMEDIATE PLACEMENT. These are the recruiters that will typically e-mail you and then call you literally 5 minutes later. While there's sometimes urgency, companies that are worth anything usually have more applicants than they can handle.

This speaks more to the quality of the recruiter than the company. If you get an email from a staffing company you've literally never heard of with almost no useful details, followed by that immediate cold call, the job is a dud, no matter where they're trying to place you. Not to be That Guy, but the recruiter will also nine times out of ten be an Indian or Mexican guy with a hopelessly thick accent.

# ¿ Aug 11, 2014 23:03

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

WYA posted:

Whats the best way to find recruiters

I actually get minimal hits from my LinkedIn, I get a lot more from Careerbuilder. Some from Monster, but Monster seems to be dying. Careerbuilder also lets you upload a selection of resumes, and then shoot a resume that matches a posting, often without filling out anything else. This will get you more traction than waiting for calls.

The hits I do get from LinkedIn tend to be for full-time things, as opposed to contracts.

I am moving jobs soon and as luck would have it, I was called for both of them, rather than having to apply for them. This new one was because I had a good relationship with a recruiter, though.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 17:30

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

WYA posted:

What do you mean by good relationship, you guys chat every day?

It's good to call about once a week, if the recruiter isn't contacting you that often already. Some people have told me every day but that seems beyond excessive. You may also have to sort out which recruiters are on the level (doing the most work on your behalf/making sure your skills are being represented well, getting you the best hourly rate among competitors).

I'm in the Seattle area and like Aquent and Aerotek.

I work in writing/editing so mileage may vary by industry.

# ¿ Aug 12, 2014 17:41

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

jackpot posted:

1. I'm currently interviewing for two different positions in the same large (~40,000 employee) company, while being represented (if that's the right word) by two different recruiters. At what point, if ever, should they learn about each other? I've been dealing with Recruiter A for longer than B, and so have a better relationship with him, but it's my feeling that A and B don't need to know about each other unless they literally both give me an offer at the same time.

2. And suppose all the stars align and they do both make me an offer at the same time - can I leverage that fact and pit them against each other like two competing car dealerships, or should I just not go there at all since these are different jobs in different divisions of the company, and thus aren't related enough to do any trading on?

Let your recruiters know that you are interviewing for other positions. If nothing else this will light a fire under their asses. Ideally you won't surprise Recruiter A if you drag your feet on his offer while waiting for Recruiter B to come through.

Don't interview for the same position with different recruiters.

# ¿ Sep 10, 2014 21:51

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Grouco posted:

I'm about 1 year into an entry level admin-type role, which is completely unrelated to my undergrad, so I'm wondering how useful LinkedIn can actually be for people with humanities degrees and no "in demand" skills... I didn't even know "recruiters" were an actual thing until recently.

My undergrad is in English, and I recently completed a research-based master's degree, so I'd like to get into editing, technical writing, proposal/bid writing, etc., as I know I have the skills to succeed, but all I have for experience is a few editing/writing type research assistantships/work placements/internships, a seemingly worthless master's degree (outside of academia, at least), and my entry level position in an unrelated field. Up until know I've been applying to jobs the "standard" way, and have had no traction, but I read the OP and am in the process of getting a decent profile set up.

Is there any hope?

If you already have a job, don't complain. Actual job experience is priceless. People everywhere are complaining that graduate degrees are increasingly worthless given the lovely state of academia jobs (hmm yes I went to school for 6+ years so I can teach one section of English 101 at Podunk Community College for worse than retail slave wages), but if you want to demonstrate to someone that you deserve to get into a program or be given a shot, experience and a grad degree certainly won't hurt.

Recruiting is huge but you need to have a strong idea of what you're looking for, because recruiters will try to shoehorn you into whatever positions they need to fill regularly. You'll need to learn what terminology and software skills the people with the jobs are looking for, and what terminology you need to avoid in order that you not attract the wrong recruiters. To be blunt, personally I would avoid pushing yourself as an Excel or data entry maven, for example.

In technical writing, learning Sharepoint and InDesign would probably be helpful, though Sharepoint can lead to jobs where you do nothing but work that's of too little importance for other people to bother with. Working in Seattle, I've seen enough terrible Sharepoint intranet sites that no one in the company actually uses to suspect that it's a bit of a flash in the pan. Coding skills make you attractive to tech companies as a technical writer, but some larger companies confuse technical writers with "coders/debuggers that we don't pay coder money for."

When you get to a job, be proactive about taking on more responsibility and in many cases you will become indispensable by force of gravity, or at least greatly appreciated. Even if they let you go after a limited contract, you can put whatever you ended up doing on your resume. Contracts are all well and good but there's no 401(k) doing contracts, which many contractors seem to realize far too late. Every contract is a chance to show experience on your resume and build a narrative. I am interested in technical writing and roles with large amounts of responsibilities, so I'll turn down stuff like "Be the guy who watches videos on Amazon all day in order to tag things for users at specific time codes." There's a lot of that sort of thing going around.

# ¿ Sep 11, 2014 08:40

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Tai-Pan posted:

Basically? You cannot. The last round of funding was a low-series A/High Angel round.
In startup terms, this is just barely a step past "My mom gave me $5,000". The market is so frothy right now that even astoundingly stupid ideas are getting funded (UBER for Pizza!!! [you mean a pizza delivery guy?!?])

However, startups are high-risk, high reward. You will obviously have to take a pay cut against a more stable company, but then there is the potential upside. Like all startup employees you are rolling the dice on the Ferrari-grade pay-day.

When I joined a startup I used these criteria (and BTW I am in marketing too).
1) Will this job help me advance my career? I.E. will I get exposure to new ideas, skills, people, etc
2) Do I believe in the product? For instance if the product involves: Delivery, Photosharing, Social or monthly boxes - run away, those ships have sailed. Make sure this company has a path to profitability. The days of "will figure it out later" are over.
3) Do I have enough potential upside to take the risk? Don't let them bamboozle you with statements like "10,000 shares" or "100,000 shares" you need to know the % of shares outstanding and your percentage of ownership. Coming in after a big round means MANY fewer shares for you. Expect to get .25% to .75%. You are too late for a 5% stake.
4) Will I get enough salary so that I am not suffering, given that 90%+ of all startups fail? Pretty obvious.

The other thing you need to understand is that you are coming in at a turning point. You are going to be a MUCH MUCH smaller percentage of owner than the other guys. They may have a culture of 100+ hour work weeks, which is fine, but you will be doing yourself a disservice if you kill yourself for someone else's company. Expect to work a lot, but don't get crazy if the upside isn't there.

1) Join a startup
2) ???
3) Obtain a controlling interest in a major league sports team

# ¿ Oct 24, 2014 19:26

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

HiroProtagonist posted:

1. No, it's not relevant, and probably good to err on the side of caution by not mentioning it. If you have a college degree there's not a whole lot of reasons to list anything prior than that anyway.

2. Don't worry about this. I've worked several (full time) contract jobs for <1 year durations and I simply list them as separate positions by the company I worked for. If someone sees that and questions the short duration of any of them I just tell them they were contract positions and as that's completely acceptable and normal it has never been an issue.

Pretty much this:

Also though, I have to say, regarding this:

While this is technically true, the way this is phrased makes it sound way more sketchy and iffy than it actually is. In the DC metro area (again, usual caveat applies that this may differ in your region), contract-to-hire is not only common, it's the norm. There are a huge number of recruiting agencies active in this region and if a potential employer uses them to source candidates, chances are that it will be a contract-to-hire arrangement.

I share the distrust of these arrangements (not the least because I had a bad experience myself while working on one of them) but the way Che characterizes them here overreaches a little bit, imo. Sure, they don't really give the potential future employee any leverage, vis a vis a direct hire placement--which by the way, given the nature of at-will employment, can be just as tenuous as a contract position--but generally a company that makes this type of arrangement with a recruiting agency has every intention of transitioning an employee at the end of that period unless there is some major issue present.

I would not turn down an offer purely because it was contract to hire. I may have a preference for direct hire, and will occasionally relay that to a recruiter I'm working with at one time or another just in case there is some wiggle room with their client, but it isn't necessarily the borderline scam job that it sounds like here.

Seattle is lousy with contract jobs as well.

# ¿ Dec 8, 2014 21:05

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

GTGastby posted:

There's two different thoughts about linkedin - one is that it's a tool to connect with colleagues and friends in the business world that you actually know and would like to stay in touch with as you move through your career / bounce around companies. That school of thought has been pushed out of this thread, and you are left with the other option - that linkedin is just another recruiting website, so just lie and try to connect to as many random people you don't know as possible and hope for the best.

So to specifically answer your question, no - the advice is current - the other people in the thread think you should just ignore the warning from Linkedin and connect with any random person who is willing to accept your request. Doesn't matter what you put for the connection reason, as you obviously don't know them. I think it's silly.

Pretty much none of this post is accurate to what people on either side in this thread actually think or what the arguments have actually been about.

I'll repeat:

quote:

There seems to be an off-and-on misconception in this thread that you should use LinkedIn to do unethical, irresponsible things, like:

Connect to absolutely everyone and spam out connection requests all the time, forever. No, connect to the people you are interacting with and with the recruiters you want to interact with. People on LinkedIn are not your Facebook friends, so you don't have to "know" them. LinkedIn officially doesn't like LIONs, but in practice they actually encourage this behavior and try to sell you on account upgrades by making it easier to do. You won't get anywhere on LinkedIn if you limit yourself to people you work with/your college friends. They don't have jobs for you and they probably want the same jobs you do.

I recently went through an interview process at [Tech Company.] I didn't get the job. I still connected with all the recruiters I interacted with there, which was helped along by the fact that they were in my gmail address book at that point. It's a large company and not all doors are closed.

Lie on your LinkedIn resume. Please don't. This will only lead to bad things. If you are officially an Analyst II, you can put that down. If you are an Analyst II but you are actually recognized as the foremost analyst out of the people you work with, you might get away with "Senior" or "Lead." That wouldn't be lying or even really dishonest. If you want to skirt around the issue entirely, leave out "II" and just make sure your bullet points describe how god-drat great you are at analyzing. If Analyst isn't descriptive enough, use what you actually do if it sounds better/will get better hits off recruiters.

LinkedIn is ideally an at-a-glance resume that targets the position/field you actually want to work in. You should be aggressive with how you use and promote your page, without being overzealous or foolish.

quote:

We seem to have this conversation about the utility and responsible use of connection requests over, and over, and over again.

Certainly LinkedIn should not and does not cater only to seasoned professionals and should not stonewall anyone without a job, "cesspool" though they may be.

Recruiters use LinkedIn a lot to talk to people they don't actually have a professional relationship with, using it in a way very similar to Careerbuilder or Monster (for the record, the calls I get from recruiters finding me on actual job boards is still much higher than it is on LinkedIn even after I spent some time aggressively seeking out recruiters on LinkedIn).

LinkedIn is both a job board and facilitates networking. Networking is about getting a job or a better job. Presenting LinkedIn as a walled garden where you can show Bob your new bone-white business card, or that it was once intended for that, is really disingenuous and obviously incorrect when you load up the basic UI.

What's at issue here is whether or not LinkedIn is breaking down the barriers between professional networking and JOBAPALOOZA.COM THE #1 JOB BOARD ON THE NET. Arguably, it is. It's simply easier to make connections when you have a paid account. You can send requests to 2nd-tier connections without getting a "how do you know this person" dialogue if you know what you're doing, with or without Premium access. Advertising for Premium clearly states better connectivity as a selling point. This enables people who have no idea what the gently caress they're doing to poison the well a little.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2015 06:14

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Just like in all careers, there are good and bad recruiters, and it doesn't really take much skill to differentiate them.

# ¿ Mar 10, 2015 21:58

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Pryor on Fire posted:

Hahahah there are no good recruiters. I'd rank scum like used car salesmen or even true dirtbags like real estate agents higher than recruiters.

The really bad recruiters are the glorified telemarketers from India, who don't ever know poo poo about you or the job and called you because your resume, which they didn't read at all, had a keyword match.

The medium-bad recruiters are working for small-time outfits, have lovely jobs, and forget about you completely an hour after you talk to them.

The good recruiters are used car salesmen but at least you have a shot at an interview with them.

# ¿ Mar 19, 2015 07:05

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

desudrive posted:

So I've been doing the LinkedIn thing for about 3 weeks now, adding recruiters and blah blah blah. Anyway, I got a strange message from a recruiter who wanted to know more about me. They ended up e-mailing me as well with about 20 different questions about previous jobs, what I look for in a job, etc. They used strange phrases like "professional frustration" and called me a "hidden recruit", and their grammar is just -off- with random double spaces, missing punctuation and letters, and the whole thing just seems weird. Not entirely suspicious though, as they did ask a few questions specifically about me on my profile such as relocation to certain areas and about my education.

I guess I have nothing to lose by e-mailing them back, I'm just not familiar with recruiters, especially when they give off a weird spammy vibe with the aforementioned grammar and spelling issues.

My best experiences with recruiters are the large, established ones that operate locally. To reiterate what I've said before, the ones where they're hiring Indians to call people with keyword matches are a waste of time.

# ¿ Apr 3, 2015 22:21

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

ToxicSlurpee posted:

I've been plastering together my LinkedIn profile over the past few days. It still needs work but I'm curious about a few things; how much is "too much?" I know that you want to keep resumes brief but because of how LinkedIn works is it best to just cram as much as you can on there? Also, I'll be finishing college soon and I'll have a BS in computer science with a math minor and a BFA. How much experience do other goons have finding work with those kinds of degrees?

I used to go into narrative mode on my LinkedIn but I switched to it essentially mirroring my resume but with a few more (not excessively more) bullet points than my one-page version.

# ¿ Sep 6, 2015 21:11

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Pryor on Fire posted:

Wow, today half of my linkedin feed is just cancer kid sob stories and pictures. First time I've visited in six months, seems to be getting worse and worse all the time. Has some other professional network gained much traction yet?

You have to do a lot of self-curating to get people who don't understand what LinkedIn is for off of your feed. The joke's on you, however: Most of what you'll be left with is marketing for companies you are following.

# ¿ Mar 4, 2016 22:24

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

Taleo is shorthand for "a human will never read your application." But at least it took you five times as long to complete as any other online application, and infinitely longer than "ATTACH RESUME, HIT SUBMIT," which is what almost every good company is doing now.

# ¿ May 13, 2016 01:34

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

If someone were determined to find it (i.e. you are Donald Trump and everyone saves what you say/pull off of social media) they could find it, whether or not you deleted it. If you just go back to the comment, I am near-certain you can delete it. I just searched Google for "My name" site:linkedin.com to see if I could see anything I commented on, and it didn't even bring up group discussion posts, which I know I've made. LinkedIn's social media feed is useless, much like skill endorsements. Most normal people are just going to look at your profile and any other open public social media you have.

# ¿ Jun 24, 2016 01:17

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

The Wiggly Wizard posted:

A couple quick questions:

1. Should I put scholarships in my profile?
2. If my grad school GPA is good (4.0) but my undergrad GPA is bad (2.8) should I advertise, one, both, or none?

I can't recall ever seeing GPAs of any kind.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 10:59

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

The Wiggly Wizard posted:

I figured that was the general rule, but I have actually been asked multiple times before for entry-level jobs.

This will eventually stop happening, based on my experience. It happens pretty much not at all on west coast jobs that are any good.

# ¿ Feb 5, 2017 21:40

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

It's a your-mileage-may-vary situation.

I haven't been looking for a job for a year and a half so I've forgotten half of what I knew, but as a technical writer, I got most of my bites off of applications on Careerbuilder. Why? I do not know.

Now that I've been doing solid work for a while I get recruiters on LinkedIn trying to get me to help them source people.

# ¿ Aug 7, 2017 01:52

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# ¿ May 9, 2024 12:57

Name Change: Oct 9, 2005

You're really wasting your breath if you're complaining about a guy sending you a job you've already passed on months ago. They're not going to keep a spreadsheet of all the people who have seen a given job ever. Stop snapping at recruiters, it doesn't accomplish anything.

# ¿ Feb 9, 2018 18:45

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Ask/Tell > Business, Finance, and Careers > Job-hunting on Linkedin: Recruiters, Groups and Networking, oh my!

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