There's an entire industry around claiming it's important, using it, optimizing it, etc.
But all of that is orthogonal to getting actual work done and the skills to do so.
... or in other words, LinkedIn is what would have happened to Craigslist, if CL had decided they wanted people to spend more time on the site, instead of concluding their business as quickly as possible.
Citation needed.
Seriously though, what alternatives should we consider?
It's what I believe recruiting should be. Potential applicants upload their bio and skills, say what they're interested in (in terms of salary range, WFH vs WFO, etc). Potential recruiters list jobs, with somewhat decent transparency (at least for the UK, where salary is rarely listed). Then one party or the other initiates a conversation.
The best applications I've been through all started via cord, and the interactions all felt genuine and were all with internal recruiters rather than agencies.
Like what? I'm genuinely curious because I've found my last two jobs through LinkedIn recruiters and I would like to know if there's a better platform out there to be my digital resume / recruiter spam dumping ground
The irony is that all the extra nonsense keeps a lot of us away even more. I think even the next time I want to change jobs, there are platforms I'll use before I go back to LinkedIn.
I guess it's like any social media platform. Once you invite too many people, you dilute the original purpose and community, and just end up with memes and cat photos.