How many people do you know that actually use LinkedIn on a daily basis?
I personally don’t know a single person that uses LinkedIn other than to occasionally update their profile. The only time I check my LinkedIn account is to check “alerts”, which typically are nothing more than the work anniversaries of people that I either don’t care about or don’t know.
From a recruiting standpoint there is value in LinkedIn due to the sheer volume of business people on the platform and the ability to possibly connect with those people. That’s where the value of LinkedIn ends and the real challenges of the LinkedIn network begins.
For starters, everyone on LinkedIn carefully curates their profile to look their best. It’s impossible to separate the A Players from the B Players. It’s simply not a true meritocracy.
With no way to identify the performance of prospective personnel on LinkedIn, your best bet is to rely on references. Refereneces are largely unreliable because prospective employees will naturally obfuscate their weaknesses by providing you the best references they can find, therefore you don’t have an accurate depiction of the person you are interviewing on LinkedIn.
