Pretty much this. I know lot of people hate Linkedin but the fact is that if you are a job candidate and have little to no Linkedin, it's a huge potential red flag in today's world. Lot of scammers, overemployeds/moonlighters out there.

In addition to possibly being a scammer, some people found my resume to be less believable without a linkedin profile. One interviewer thought I was lying about my previous job title.

Agree with this, unfortunately. I have a coworker who routinely calls people without linkedins "sketchy" and obsessively looks everyone else, vendors, functional area colleagues, etc up on linkedin. I didn't have a very fleshed out linkedin myself because I value privacy and was surprised how biased some people are about it. I've also seen candidates who have otherwise passed interview panels get veto'd because the dates on their linkedins don't match their CVs.

I don’t have a LinkedIn and it has impaired my job hunts in the past but I always worry that creating one now (without the references of colleagues from decades of past work) would look worse than not having one?

Seconding. These days I will rarely talk to anyone without a verified LinkedIn or other presence like a clearly inhabited GitHub (and I’m not looking for hyperactivity by any means)

Well, that sucks. The one thing I hate about Linked in is being up-rated on my skills by people who barely know what I do and certainly have never worked with me in any capacity or even discussed my work in any sense beyond "What do you do for a living?".

From where I sit, it's a tool for marketers and recruiters to gather data and it's otherwise completely useless.

In 2025 it basically means you're likely a bot/scammer. LinkedIn provides the social proof that at least you're a real person, with real business connections. It's sadly not optional.

> Hiring managers check you on LinkedIn 100 percent of the time.

YMMV. White collar work here follows connections and introductions - nearly exclusively. A few of my clients might have poked around Linkedin in passing but most have never used it.

As an aside, I deleted my LI because I've never had a legit contact thru it, only spam.

source: 35yrs in IT

I have to disagree. I looked for a long time before I found my last gig (that ended in 2022). I had a LinkedIn and it wasn't much different, it took me months to find something. I still have a linkedin account to look for jobs, but that's it. No connections, no work history. What's relevant is on my resume anyway so I don't see what having a regular linkedin account would do. I deleted it when I found that job because, even as a job seeker, I saw no value in it and as a user, I saw no excuse to defend it.

Even if i did i would never post it publicly. And yes i understand that it means i won't be getting thousands of strangers looking at my personal experience, one of whom might want to hire me. I wouldn't post my resume either. I'm just not comfortable giving my data to a company i don't trust and to share it openly on the public web. And yes i'm ok with the consequences.

How much do you interact with colleagues from 2000 and how much do they really know about your current capabilities? Probably nothing or minimal…”he was a helluva cobol dev back in ‘00” doesn’t sound like a valuable reference if I am a hiring manager in 2025 looking for a Rust dev.

Current colleagues and bosses would have to cycle out themselves and land elsewhere before they will be a help as a network resource.

Also, for current colleagues—-consider the case if your whole team gets RIF’d. At that point they are no longer your colleague, nor really a good network resource until they land. What they are is a competitor and a competitor likely similarly skilled as you, competing for the same roles that you are.

Your best network resources don’t currently work with you, but are secure in a gig, and someone you have worked with or for in the last 3-5 years.