Didn’t my new employer want me to update my LinkedIn? That never came up, but if it would have I would have delayed. Why should I support their business model.

At its most basic, this is a cult of qualification which no longer provides real value, it fails for a number of reasons I won't get into here.

When you disqualify arbitrarily, and can't find anyone because of that, its your fault for disqualifying everyone, not the market's fault for not having the ballerina that doesn't exist.

Want a programmer in a language thats only 10 years old with 15 years of direct experience? You aren't going to find it even when the creator of that language applies.

You pay to have the work done. That is the only legitimate requirement for hiring someone and remaining employed, and you can't go and change the requirements later when they show they can do more. Doesn't matter if they moonlight, are overemployed etc. That view to disqualify such people are in fact monopolistic practices designed to disenfranchise wages that are already low and distorted because of money-printing, they are not red-flags.

Its like the flawed type of thinking that "We need someone to do this work, but this guy is so overqualified he'll leave first chance; so we won't hire anyone".

You hire to have a job done. You don't get to be an arbitrary slave master. The moment you lose sight of this is the moment you ignore your immediate needs, and drive your company on a path towards failure, and if its a consolidated large company, that failure and bad decisionmaking will impact a lot more people because of the centralization/concentration.

Financial engineering can decouple the need for immediate action, but the tradeoff is that the risk of not doing things you should have done becomes far greater to your long-term sustainability, and its completely invisible. There is no place for deception and coercion in the hiring process. If the job doesn't exist, don't jam communication channels. Jamming channels is tortuous interference.

If anybody used to enjoy working with you and they know of something it, should be easy enough from then on.

It used to be a thing of the past - people don't seem to bother now. Go ahead and create the profile. Search and connect with your colleagues.

I hardly use LinkedIn, but it does show work history. As someone else said there was a flurry of “endorsements” but I haven’t seen many since.

I would suggest creating the linkedin profile but be sure to fully populate the job descriptions for each job (or as far back as you care to go) and spend some time looking up past colleagues from each one and send them invites to connect.

I'm finding that a completely blank linkedin profile (listing only companies but zero detail) is a bigger red flag than not having a linkedin profile.

But having a profile with job description info and a network of connections from each job adds credibility. When a resume looks borderline suspicious, I dig through the persons connections in linkedin to see if it looks like they really worked at each of those places. Even better if I find any shared connections, which is a stronger signal that I'm looking at a real person not an AI bot.

Also, building that network of connections can be a source of job leads on its own.

You can also make one, add people, and then ask for a few references. "I just finally made a linkedin in 2025 on a lark" is a perfectly cromulent icebreaker/reason to ask.

Last I checked, verification requires people to install the app. No thanks.

Whether I like LinkedIn or not is completely irrelevant. I play the game, add connections, post a few banal “Thought Leadership” posts, ask for recommendations, etc.

My remote job at BigTech fell into my lap in mid 2020 and at 46 because an internal recruiter reached out to me, I got my next job two years ago within a week after I started looking because of targeted LinkedIn outreach. My current job also fell into my lap two weeks after I started looking because an internal recruiter reached out to me.

It does absolutely no good being good at your job if no one knows it.

I think even in the current job market, someone would give me a job or a contract relatively quickly if I needed one based on my network, LinkedIn profile, and positive impressions I’ve made in my niche over the past 7 years.

If I disclose an email address that's directly traceable to my current employer---or even one provided to me by professional organizations I'm registered with---as adequate "social proof" (whatever that means) that I'm not "likely a bot/scammer", and a company's hiring manager is too blind to see the signal, then I'd write that off as a hidden trap passively dodged with confident relief.

My primary reason for this was that unfortunately some resumes seem to include quite of bit of creative writing -- creativity which the applicant could bet only I, and my company, would see. If, however, the applicant had posted similar claims about past jobs on LI, it was public for all to see so somewhat likely to be less "creative" as most people find it embarrassing to get _caught_ claiming credit for work that someone else did or giving an overblown explanation of the import of their work. This is, of course, not 100% reliable as I've seen coworkers and past employees posting on LI claiming things they were "responsible for" or "implemented" when, in fact, they only had a tiny role (or, occasionally, even no discernible role) in.

Also, if I happened to notice a "connection" that I also knew, I could potentially ask them about the applicant (using due care to make sure that the applicant wouldn't be "outed" at their current job by my doing so).

You refuse to change anything about your process, you aren't working to improve it, you are arguing against people telling them you don't need to do common/standard things.

This thread is a pretty good insight into why you are failing and what you need to work on.