Connect with me: https://www.linkedin.com/in/nelsonic I will help you fast-track this.

I have a parallel-universe version of the question--from a universe where I've ~idealistically refused to create a LinkedIn account.

How would you go about finding a recruiter sans LinkedIn? :)

You could go out, network, go to hiring fairs and various places.

At which point you're pretty much always going to be asked for a LinkedIn, and pretty much noone will want to put work in for someone not doing something has simple as creating an account. So, unfortunately, as the other comment said, swallow your pride.

These networks have made it so that the cost of idealism is being cut off socially, whether that's friends or employers.

Swallow your pride.

No. I will never have a Linkedin profile. I will live in the woods and eat nuts and berries first. And I'm serious about this.

Last time I checked, I can’t exchange pride or whatever is keeping you from creating a LinkedIn profile for goods and services.

Um, personal data, and yes you absolutely can sell it, just not (paradoxically) if it belongs to you.

_Using_ LI, costs attention too, increasingly so, as with all social networks, but you also receive some in exchange, so if you don't value your own attention all that much higher than every other human's on the planet ¯\_(ツ)_/¯

...yeah, it's pride.

I mean you can just have a LinkedIn and only ever use it for a job search. That's what I do. I write on top of my profile "email me, I check this once every 3 months."

Well, seeing that I got a job that will pay me 1 million+ over the course of four years from a BigTech recruiter reaching out to me in 2020 all at the “expense” of creating a profile and reading an email when they sent me a message, I think the tradeoff was well worth it.

How much money have you made by creating a profile on HN and reading and posting to it and giving it your attention since 2015?

Contact recruiting agencies, they have websites. Local ones might hold events (e.g. talks) you can physically go to to meet them.

Thank you for answering sincerely and without condescension. <3

I'm not on LinkedIn either :) There are plenty of other helpful comments on this comments page, e.g.: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36904735

This is weird. I've stopped going on LinkedIn because there is a constant barrage of recruiters.

If you list the right skills they will find you.

Back in the doctom crash recruiters wouldn't pick your calls. Downmarket takes a bit of mental adjustment if it's your first time.

This definitely used to be the case for me, but the large employment gap absolutely killed that. Not a surprise.

I had one gap I thought could be a problem(a couple years). I definitely lost ~50%-75% of the offers because of it, but I found what I was looking for in the end. However in my case during the gap I was working on my own projects that are at least tangentially related to my work.

If you haven't and your gap is for other reasons I'd write a "skills based cv" and definitely spend at least 2 weeks reminding yourself everything you need to know before you go for technical interview. There is no worse feeling than getting a technical question you knew an answer for, but you can't quite remember what is was.

I also found it's easier to apply directly rather than through recruiters if you have a big gap in your work.

It flops from side to side, six months/a year ago I got about one-three per week, now zero for several months and only bot adds.

How do you identify a bot ad?

No profile picture, working in some big company that is entirely unrelated to me, lots of common connections but no posts, no engagement or anything. For example I have had five that works as "engagement manager at walmart" add me in the last few weeks, and also people common to me, I can see the number of common contacts go up by just updating the page because a lot of people will just accept any connection request.

Yeah but it’s all random phone calls from people with an accent so thick i can’t understand them, who obviously haven’t read my resume, and who won’t pick up the phone if I try to call them back anyways.

Add them as a friend on LinkedIn and start a conversation.

This is how they do it, they don't mind if candidates do it back.

I’ve done this about 50 times at this point with various strategies and have gotten ghosted on about 40, been told they aren’t hiring on 5, and told they had been fired on the other 5. I’m not sure this one works very well, at least at lower YoE.

This sort of mirrors what my experience has been during my search. In the past, reaching out via LinkedIn or otherwise would merit a response (at least); however, in the current market, I never get a reply and in some cases I see the application is rejected. I feel like sending messages is hurting more than helping.

Likewise with follow-ups. Anytime I follow-up on an interview, I never hear back or it is rejected, so I've stopped following up after interviews completely.

Interesting, I had better luck. You might be right that experience could be the difference, I'm 15 YoE.

Tbh once I listed my AWS architect qualifications, I went from 1 contact/week (since March, it was a bit better before) to 5/day.

Did you add a skill or a certification?

Certification

Ask around, google "inland empire recruiter", look on social media for recruiters (I know a few active on Twitter/X).

But asking around is best; shoot a few messages to ex-colleagues on linkedin.