It's strange to me how much linkedin is valued in silicon valley because to me it's like the ugly stepsister of social networking. Expecting someone to have a fully built out profile and expecting that person to actively seek out contacts in their own company is strange. I typically seek out contacts either when I first meet them or not at all. The only rhyme or reason to when I do it is when I happen to have a reason to be on linkedin. People are very haphazard about what their contacts look like. Some people have 50% recruiters, some people it's all friends, some people it's work colleagues, some people it's potential clients. Just because you know somebody doesn't mean that you are linkedin friends, and just because you aren't linkedin friends, doesn't mean that that person knows much about you at all.
I wouldn't trust social profile hunting as a real gauge for anyone's abilities. I know plenty of good coders that don't have github accounts because they aren't involved in open source at all. There are plenty of recruiters that don't know linkedin because they have other sources that fill their pipelines. There are people that build out their profiles specifically for job searches. There are others that won't build out a profile at all.
As far as back-channel references go, I'm not a fan. I expect references to be minimal because giving a reference is odd territory. A bad reference can result in a lawsuit, so why would anyone ever give a bad one? A TMI good reference can result in a lawsuit. People should stick to the basics.
The danger territory as far as I'm concerned is hiring someone at the tail end of a long group of rejects. You peel back your instincts in order to get to the finish line.
Indeed. My LinkedIn account has a few contacts, but they're each a combination of two rare events:
- somebody from an old company added me as a contact, and
- I happen to have checked LinkedIn that year
That adds up to maybe six random people over 15 year.
My GitHub account is similar looking. A few public client libraries for my sass businesses, some private repos from old consulting gigs, and a handy way to log in to a few other awkward developer services.
I'm not really surprised at how heavily linkedin is used. It's an easy check for companies to carry out, so they'll make use of it.
As a candidate spending a bit of time connecting to people on Linkedin can help your chances of finding a role, so why not do it? Obviously, some people will have other better avenues of getting roles, but it's one avenue that can be used.
Personally I've never used Linkedin to find a role however I do find it handy just to get an idea of who works where in the industry and where pepople I've known in previous roles work now.
I suppose I phrased things a bit harshly. I see value in LinkedIn from a candidate/networking perspective. From a validation/reference perspective is where I see the issue.
This isn't the first I've heard of using it for back-channel references. I think that is pretty common in the bay area.
For what it’s worth I have never had a LinkedIn account and it’s never come up in interviews or been any sort of problem. Maybe things are different in SV though.
I wouldn't trust social profile hunting as a real gauge for anyone's abilities. I know plenty of good coders that don't have github accounts because they aren't involved in open source at all. There are plenty of recruiters that don't know linkedin because they have other sources that fill their pipelines. There are people that build out their profiles specifically for job searches. There are others that won't build out a profile at all.
As far as back-channel references go, I'm not a fan. I expect references to be minimal because giving a reference is odd territory. A bad reference can result in a lawsuit, so why would anyone ever give a bad one? A TMI good reference can result in a lawsuit. People should stick to the basics.
The danger territory as far as I'm concerned is hiring someone at the tail end of a long group of rejects. You peel back your instincts in order to get to the finish line.