LinkedIn

I have never understood how to manage a LinkedIn profile efficiently. For those unfamiliar with the social networking platform, its big-picture purpose is to connect employers and employees through endorsements from coworkers and those who can vouch for an individual's skills. It can connect businesses and their representatives to assess potential employees discretely through the employee’s connections to others.

My issues with LinkedIn are the same ones I have with social media in general: it isn’t real. It is at best a surface representation of the best aspects of a person’s employable identity. One can spend hours curating a LinkedIn page (or minutes, buying endorsements to add credibility to their claims) to present their ‘best self’ when truthfully they have curated the subset of their character that employers are looking for. A five minute conversation with someone who knows the profile-holder in person could tell you more than every tagged skill the person posted to their own page.

Ellen Hunt, a writer for The Guardian received one of the most apt breakdowns of LinkedIn from an anonymous user while writing her piece, LinkedIn is the worst of social media. Should I delete my account?:

“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, plasticized optimism and synthetic relationships.”

I understand the usefulness of having a LinkedIn account for certain fields (marketing and advertising come to mind), but the effort and time sunk into maintaining an account is something I hope I never, ever, ever, ever am expected to do. I will sooner return to a job cleaning bodily fluids from barroom floors than spend another second working on my LinkedIn profile.

[Bonus reading: a brief review of Jared Lanier’s Ten Arguments for Deleting Your Social Media Accounts Right Now, which influenced everything I’ve written]