Why Should I Accept the Job Offer?
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BORING VIDEO ON NETWORKING YOU NEED TO WATCH
People know they need to do it. They know why, but only 48 percent actually take the steps that will enhance their career. Why? Watch this video for insight and actional strategies.
Stop Kidding Yourself About Networking On LinkedIn!
I have been a member of this platform for more than 19 years. I wasn’t there when Reid Hoffman hit the GO LIVE button in 2003, but I was scrambling in not too long afterward.
The platform’s great hope to facilitate networking and a sense of community was lost with explosive growth, the sale to Microsoft for $26.2 billion, and an influx of sales pitch artists, hucksters, recruiters, and a recent invasion of Asian beauty BOTS who try to drag you off the platform for “more private conversation on Telegram or WhatsApp. Can you spell B-I-T-C-O-I-N hustle?
The site’s networking shortcomings aside, you must give the profitable monster its due: it is a vital go-to site for recruiters. Its investment in recruiting technology, including sophisticated AI automation, makes it a place where you must be seen with a killer profile and frequent posts to entice the applicant sourcing scanners. But for networking, a critical part of the career management skill set, LinkedIn is just a massively big, epically profitable, research tool.
In the end, as it turns out, there is no substitution for the old-fashioned fundamentals of human interaction — what football coaches call blocking and tackling.
‘LinkedIn Has Become Really Weird’
While LinkedIn’s peer-to-peer networking and the development of professional communities is largely a messy dumpster fire, it remains a powerful force, albeit a little weird and whacky at times. In fact, the amount of personal social networking and political BS, something that would have earned a quick rebuke for a misguided post in the early days, is now surprising. From a career management perspective, you cannot ignore this platform whose global “membership” is approaching one billion people.
Today, effectively using LinkedIn requires a more nuanced approach.