The Ghost of LinkedIn

Photo by Zulfugar Karimov on Unsplash

Let me start by saying I’m well aware of how funny it is that this blog will be posted on my LinkedIn account.

Now, LinkedIn itself.

I saw a job application the other day that required your LinkedIn profile link. This caught me off guard, because I’ve seen many applications that let you optionally include it, but none that made it mandatory. This was the first time. I help mentor a group of young designers, and I although I told them to create an LI profile, it was more of a “nice-to-have” thing. I’ve joined the long line of professionals who no longer see LI as a useful tool.

LI used to be the place for networking, education, discovering industry experts, and maybe the most important - finding new career opportunities. Over the years, it’s morphed into an echo chamber full of AI bots, “coaches” selling their services, weird posts that would be more appropriate for personal Facebook walls, and probably the worst thing - stale or unhelpful job listings.

LI has become one of the most unhelpful sources for job hunting. Most of the job listings are stale, or they return unrelated jobs that ignore the filters you set. You can see jobs from months ago, only to click the link and find a “this job is no longer available” message.

Another frustrating thing that I see and hear about is just how much LI pushes its “premium” option, locking more and more options behind a paywall. I had one of my students sign up for premium to see who was looking at their profile, or to see “AI insights” on how their profile stacked up alongside others, and it got them nothing in return.

The job market is bad all around, but as someone in the market myself and who sees others in the market, I spend most of my time trying to reassure them that they’ll find something that fits them. As much as AI is pushing out designers, companies are downsizing or outsourcing their design work or putting more and more responsibilities on their design team (that aren’t typically a part of design) - it’s a struggle.

I’ve been in this business for over 10 years. My career has been - what I feel - stagnant for a few years now. I still have my freelance work, which is fulfilling, but as far as my “day job”, I find it hard to motivate young designers when I don’t have the motivation myself.

Design is an undervalued profession (more than before), and the choices often fall into jobs at “stable” institutions (higher education, nonprofits, government, etc.) but don’t have room for growth, and jobs that are high-risk (startups, b2b tech, etc.) but can’t guarantee high rewards or stability.

Because I’ve been in this career for so long, and because I’ve been with the same organization for so long (5 years, which is a LONG time these days), my younglings ask me what it’s like and if they should consider that path. I give them my very honest answer.

No.

I greatly value the stability and consistency that working at my organization brings, but I’m also honest with them about the other side.

There’s no growth, and almost no reward.

There are no paths forward, no opportunities for advancement, and - in my opinion - no reward for going “above and beyond”. Well, that depends on who you know, but that’s a different story. You can spend years doing your absolute best, often doing the work of two people, and still be in the exact same position while others advance. There may be “raises”, but as you get to the top of the range and as the cost of living increases, “small pay bumps” often don’t make a dent in your paycheck. My goal isn’t to discourage them, but I also want to paint a realistic picture for them.

I may have veered off-topic a bit, lol. LinkedIn!

Even though the overwhelming number of people I know couldn’t tell you the last time they even opened LI, let alone updated theirs, I still tell my baby designers to make one anyway. It will likely be aggressively unhelpful, but it doesn’t hurt anything to make one.

Just don’t pay for premium to see who “looked at your profile” in the hopes that it’s someone wanting to offer you a job. Chances are it may just be a coworker being nosy.