Regular readers will know that I have mixed feelings about LinkedIn. It is a useful recruitment tool in many ways but it's also hugely irritating in others and an opportunity for less good recruiters to be extremely lazy which ruins things for the more professional recruiters. Anyway. The market has been quite dismal for a while now. A small number of opportunities across the regions, very few senior hires, some very depressed job hunters and increasingly, people leaving the creative sector entirely. I do understand how hard it is to be out of work and to feel like you are sending out application after application with very little response. How increasingly, you are worried about the mortgage and other overheads and I would say particularly for senior level people - starting to think that ageism is a very real issue in our sector. Although conversely, we're seeing far fewer junior and graduate roles too - a result of the cost of hiring staff at a high minimum wage with increased NI contributions required.
So, all in all, it's not a pretty picture. But increasingly, I am seeing some extremely negative posts on LinkedIn. In the main, these are very disillusioned job hunters who are probably at the end of their tether. The open to work flag is highlighted and day after day, there is an increasingly negative post. Often these posts are highly personal, and I do understand again, that being out of work is HARD and people are frustrated, angry and sad. They are venting. But venting publicly is not the optimal route to finding a new job.
My personal opinion is that LinkedIn is a professional networking site. I'm not a fan of the overly personal posts generally - there is a LOT of oversharing to people who we really don't know at all. I certainly don't object to job-hunters who are sending me messages to expand their network or to ask for advice but it is very much on a professional level.
One of the first things that a future employer will do when they see a CV, is to look at a candidate's socials. They'll probably just do it out of nosiness - to have a look at how they come across, what sort of personality do they have (and you can tell a lot from someone's social output!). As long as you have your privacy settings sorted for whatever your personal social channels of choice are then that's your decision and future employers will probably give a bit of leeway as those are your personal social channels. However, having anything less than positive on your LinkedIn profile....well, if that future client has a choice between you and someone else who has kept things upbeat and relevant, they're going to go for the positive person.
Being authentic is one thing but being outwardly negative and continuing with that theme is not going to get you the job. Worse, is slagging off ex-employers or well, anyone really. Talking about the eleventy billion applications that you have sent off with no response doesn't come across well either. You'd be better getting on with making some more strong applications or doing some actual networking than talking about it on LinkedIn. Light hearted posts are fine as long as they are in some way relevant to your job or the creative sector but do bear in mind that a lot of employers just want good and hard workers in their teams, not people who are spending a lot of time on their LinkedIn personal branding. Even when we don't realise it, we are judging people all the time. Don't give future employers any reasons to discount you from their selection procedure because they've seen you posting doom, gloom and abject negativity. As with all social media tools - we're also scrolling through LinkedIn and reading all the toxic positivity (yes, the opposite is as bad!) - don't believe everything you read and there's a lot of absolutely garbage content that people put out there. Try and maintain a healthy optimism, apply for appropriate roles, stay positive and don't get caught up in negative posting.
Always happy to chat. Fiona 07976 125963