LinkedIn: Is it useful for DEVs in 2020?

Devs who use LinkedIn, could you please share your experience on using the platform? Do you find job opportunities there, have you found some useful contacts there, etc?
Overall, is it worth to create and spend time on developing a complete profile there or you believe personal portfolio could be enough?

Comments

[JoelBonetR 🥇]

I was hired by a big company that found me on LinkedIn on 2018 and I'm still at this position, many other recruiters contacted me through linkedIn so i would say it's a must

[Madza]

Awesome to hear 👍😉

[Yuan Gao]

I deal with recruiting for my team. We don't specifically use LinkedIn, but the recruiting software that we use automatically posts there, and brings candidates into our system, so it's pretty one-click for us to put jobs on linkedin. Candidates that end up on our system get treated the same way as coming in from other platforms or applying directly. The only difference is Linkedin automatically generates a CV sometimes, and it's not nice to look at.

I think about 30% of applicants for software development positions come from LinkedIn Job section. But remember: most recruitment/candidate tracking platforms automatically push out onto multiple job sites at once, so rarely is LinkedIn the only place you'll find an ad.

I tend not to use LinkedIn for active sourcing because there's just too much noise. I get messages daily from recruiters trying to get me to look at their candidates, and I don't have time to manually filter out all the networking requests because more than half of them are recruiters or people trying to sell me stuff. However, I do know that some people's jobs is to do that, but they're split into two kinds of people:

1. internal recruiters, whose job is to source candidates. These people will reach out to people with promising-looking job profiles and will use LinkedIn's search capabilities to narrow down positions
2. recruitment agencies, many of whom aren't really looking to fill specific jobs and are just looking to fill a pool. Some have predatory practices, beware.

However, when assessing candidates, I will sometimes go and check their work history. So it's good to have that.

My personal recommendations are:

1. keep your profile up to date so it's searchable by those active sourcing on linkedin
2. don't spend too long doing the connections and stuff
3. use linkedin jobs search, as it's not bad
4. if you have portfolio to share, it's probably going to have to be elsewhere (github if programming projects, personal profiles/blogs otherwise) but these tend to be supplementary information that might get looked at only in later stages of an interview process

[Madza]

Thanks for the extended insight 🔥 Learned a bit 👍
It's always valuable to get tips from recruiters themselves 👌

[Gabriel Sadaka]

The past two jobs I have had have come from recruiters seeking me out on LinkedIn. Both times the recruiters weren't connections I had so they found me via search.

I think building a profile on there that clearly represents your experience and who you are is a valuable time investment. Plenty of good resources online on how to build good LinkedIn profiles that recruiters will find.

[Dave]

I find that there's good & bad to it.

The bad, is mostly the spam from the recruiters that just want to fill an interview slot, or just want to update their CRM to get their manager off their back (in some cases, they ask for a CV without actually having a job role to put you forward for).

That said, it's manageable, honestly.

The better parts of it:

• through LinkedIn, I have in the past had a recruiter approach me "would you be interested in applying for this?" which lead to a 45min interview, and 10mins after the interviewer the recruiter called me back with "they'd like to offer you 12k/year more than you get paid right now."
• I can keep in touch with past co-workers, keep up to date with where they are, share techie news with them, without it being Facebook.
• I now have several recruiters that I would almost call friends, so much so that when a friend on the other side of the country called me with "I hate my job" - it took me 30mins to get them a recruiters phone number near them that had comparable roles for them to talk about.

[Madza]

Thanks for the insight 🔥👍

[Lorenzo]

Absolutely yes.
Here in Italy i found many opportunities as Devs for medium-large companies.
Also recently , i was contacted and hired for a position as Team Leader for Facile.it!
Thanks, LinkedIn.

[Adam Crockett 🌀]

Yes, all my well paid jobs found me from Linkedin recruitment.

[Eric COURTIAL]

Yes it I think it is quite helpfull to find new jobs and opportunities.
However you have to be very patient, because today LK has become a Facebook-like where people mix-up personnal branding, business and personnal life, trolls...

[Madza]

That's why I was concerned, tbh 😉

[James Young]

LinkedIn is an annoying online CV site. The only reason to have a LinkedIn page is for others who expect to find you there or ask you for your LinkedIn page.

[Angga Lesmana]

Just apply

[Vishnu Haridas]

I find it a very good platform. If your profile is good, recruiters will search and find you. Since most of the recruiters use the premium version (LinkedIn Gold?) they get the tools to discover people that match their requirements.

A personal portfolio is definitely a good addition, but most recruiters don't reach them directly, instead, they reach your portfolio website from your LinkedIn profile.

So I think that LinkedIn is still relevant if you are actively looking for opportunities.