If you spend all day on LinkedIn looking for your next job, you’re digging yourself into a hole.

And if I had to bet money, I believe that you will not find your next job on LinkedIn in 2025.

Here’s the thing:

I want you to stop viewing LinkedIn as a job-searching website.

Instead, let’s just call it what it is:

Another social media platform.

And as we know with all social media companies, their main intention is this:

To keep you as the user on the platform for as long as possible…

… because the longer you stay logged in, the more money they make.

Now, am I saying that LinkedIn keeps people unemployed?

Not necessarily.

But, I do believe people who use LinkedIn as their main source of job searching will have a lower chance of getting the jobs they want (or of finding a new job in general).

And I believe this for three reasons:

1. The platform makes it hard for you to stand out as a competitive candidate.
2. Networking and making “connections” isn’t effective on the platform because it lacks humanity.
3. LinkedIn steals your time and attention, both of which are valuable resources for your job hunt.

I’m going to break down each of these three points.

Then, at the end, I’m going to give you my take as a career coach on what I think actually works for finding a job in today’s crazy job market.

So, if you’re serious about landing your next big job opportunity, stick around until the end.

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I get it—searching for a job is emotionally draining, especially today.

From ghost job postings to getting ghosted by recruiters, I can see why everyone is giving up.

So, part of the appeal of a platform like LinkedIn is that it’s going to make things easy for you.

On one single platform, you can…

1. Apply for jobs.
2. Communicate with thousands of companies and their recruiters.
3. Update your job history in real-time for anyone to see.

It sounds amazing.

But could part of the problem with LinkedIn be that it makes things almost too easy?

Absolutely.

With the barrier to entry being so low, everyone now uses LinkedIn.

In fact, it’s now a social norm that you maintain a LinkedIn profile if you’re in the corporate world.

With most people I talk to, I now find that it has become people’s first instinct to start their job hunt by logging onto LinkedIn.

This cultural shift has made LinkedIn one of the largest social media platforms out there.

With over 1.15 billion monthly active users, the platform now surpasses Snapchat, X, and Reddit.

This should be concerning for you because finding a job can be a numbers game.

Yes, the more jobs you apply to, the more likely you are to get one.

But, on the flip side, the more people that apply to a job, the harder it’s going to be to get it.

And with how many people there are submitting job applications online through LinkedIn, it’s making the competition more fierce than ever.

That’s why you have a bunch of people saying they applied to hundreds (sometimes thousands) of jobs until they finally landed an interview:

Because everyone is doing the same thing.

Every second, 140 job applications are submitted through LinkedIn.

That’s 8,400 applications per minute!

With this being the “new normal,” things are way harder for you as a job seeker than ever before.

I mean, good luck standing out as a competitive applicant when there are hundreds (sometimes thousands) of other people gunning for the same role.

And with the opportunity for remote work, you’re not just competing with people in your neighborhood anymore.

You’re competing with users from all around the world.

But unless you want to become one of those annoying corporate influencers who spends all day beefing up their personal brand on LinkedIn, there has to be a better way to stand out, right?

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Aside from being a numbers game, I’d say that getting a job is more about connections.

But I’m not talking about LinkedIn connections.

I’m talking about your average, everyday connections you already have with people in real life.

When I look back at my own job history, over 90% of the jobs and promotions I’ve received in the last decade have been a result of a connection.

The last job I had, for example, (before starting my own business as a career coach) was given to me as a result of a really small connection.

To make a long story short, I had a friend of a friend who knew the hiring manager of the job I was applying for.

Through this seemingly-trivial connection, I was able to get the hiring manager’s contact information and then I emailed her.

I told her I was interested in her job posting and, all of a sudden, the next week I had an interview with her team.

Yes, I still had to apply and meet the job requirements just like everyone else did.

But me emailing her actually allowed me to stand out in the sea of resumes.

This was a pretty desirable job, too:

Six-figure salary, fully remote, great benefits.

I bet that if I had never sent that email, I would have been ignored.

I mean, imagine being the hiring manager for a very competitive job like that.

If you have hundreds of applicants, do you really think you’ll be able to equally weigh and contact every qualified candidate?

Probably not—you won’t have the time or energy.

Hiring managers end up having to ignore lots of great applicants.

Depending on your luck, you might be the one getting ignored.

Networking, though, allows you to circumvent luck.

It allows you to get noticed and almost guarantees that a human will personally review your resume.

And this is important because, at the end of the day, yes—we do have technology to review resumes and source out candidates.

But humans are still making the decisions—who to interview, who to push forward, and ultimately who to hire.

The power of networking isn’t a new concept, either.

In fact, Keith Ferrazzi wrote an entire book about networking called Never Eat Alone.

In the book, he references a study that surveyed young men, asking them how they got their current jobs.

The majority of them said they got hired through a personal connection.

Even though Ferrazzi’s book was published in 2005, I believe the information still holds true.

As I said before, the majority of the jobs I’ve had in the past have been a result of networking.

Even when I asked my friends who started new jobs in the last few months, they, too, said they got hired through some sort of a connection.

But not a LinkedIn connection—a connection they had in the real world.

My friend PJ, for example, got his job at Microsoft because of someone he knew from the army.

My other friend, Rob, got his job as a speech therapist at a research university because of the connections he made in his Master’s program.

For PJ and Rob, these connections weren’t even close relatives or best friends.

They were just your everyday connections—the ones you would never expect to produce a fruitful result like this.

So, what is it about networking that gives you this competitive edge?

Most of all, it allows you to cut through the noise.

At a certain point, you have to be real with yourself and just look at the numbers:

• 1.15 billion monthly active users.
• 140 job applications submitted every second that time passes.
• Thousands of applicants for a single job posting.

If you don’t want to rely on pure luck, you have to find a way to get your application in front of the hiring team’s eyes.

And you do that by networking.

Now, I can hear you asking…

“But, wait… isn’t LinkedIn a good place to network?”

Let’s think about it.

Remember, this is a game of numbers.

And if you have billions of people in a single venue all doing the same thing—trying to “network” by messaging recruiters on LinkedIn—your efforts aren’t going to allow you to stand out.

Sure, LinkedIn does give you the ability to directly message recruiters.

But their inboxes are probably filled with a bunch of people just like you:

Desperate job-seekers looking for a nibble.

“But, wait… what if a recruiter reaches out to me on LinkedIn? Isn’t that good?”

Oh, honey, you naive soul.

More often than not, recruiters have tools that allow them to batch-send messages.

If they’re hiring for a role, they can send a thousand messages all at once to try and find applicants for their posting.

And whether or not they respond to you again personally is another luck of the draw.

I’ve heard many stories from people saying they get ghosted by recruiters on LinkedIn way too often, even when the recruiter messages them first.

So, the point of the story is this:

There are just way too many people on LinkedIn right now…

… way too many spam messages being sent out…

… making it hard for you to stand out…

… and making it hard to know who and what is real.

That’s why if you can network outside of the platform, your chances will increase exponentially.

Even small networking efforts (like asking friends if they know some friends) produce big results.

If a friend can put a good word in for you, you immediately have a way to prove your realness, your humanity.

You won’t be just another pixelated person on a screen.

I mean, do you really think a social media profile and a PDF that details your job history truly represents you as a complex human being?

At the end of the day, people are more likely to do business with those they know, like, and trust (KLT).

Online applications and networking via LinkedIn don’t give you an opportunity to build your KLT with a hiring team.

So, in a world where everyone seems more “connected” while somehow isolated and alone at the same time, finding connections in the real world will help you immensely on the job hunt.

True networking allows hiring teams to feel that humanity from you that seems so stripped away on a site like LinkedIn.

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I hope you can see by now that a lot of the time spent on LinkedIn is often wasted effort.

There are other things you can be doing outside of the platform that will produce greater results.

But I also want to reiterate what I said at the beginning of the video:

LinkedIn is a social media platform.

And the main way social media platforms make profit is by stealing your time and attention.

Just like any other platform, they hook you in with engaging content like videos and think-posts.

And it often feels like you’re being “productive” because LinkedIn is a socially acceptable corporate venue.

But are you really doing anything different than scrolling through Facebook or Instagram?

As a consumer, you may find yourself mindlessly scrolling when you could be working on your job hunt.

And you have to be careful about the content you’re consuming too.

When you’re constantly seeing others posting about their promotions and new jobs, it can make you feel down about yourself and set up unrealistic expectations for your job search.

Instead of spending all day “looking for a job” on LinkedIn, here’s what I want you to do instead.

First, network in the real world.

Reach out to friends and/or family members who work at companies you want to work at.

And ask if they have friends who can lead you in the right direction.

And second, research companies and apply on their website directly.

Remember: Not every job exists on LinkedIn.

And if you’re only applying to what LinkedIn gives you, you limit your options.

Not only that, but you’re willingly making your job search tougher because you’re limiting yourself to the highly-impacted LinkedIn jobs.

Applying directly to a company website gives you a better chance of being noticed.

Plus, it allows you to be more intentional with which places you apply to…

… to really think about where and for who you want to work for.

Even though it might seem like more work, it’s not about keeping it easy.

In fact, LinkedIn’s ease is part of the problem.

It’s keeping you as a passive consumer rather than an active participant in your job search.

Doesn’t sound too empowering, eh?

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In essence, the problem with LinkedIn is part of a greater narrative about the fears we have in society about doing uncomfortable things.

We want love, but we don’t want to go up to the cute person at the coffee shop.

So, we use dating apps.

We want connection, but we don’t want to talk on the phone with our families.

So, we text instead.

We want jobs, but we don’t want to have a real, human interaction with anyone.

So, we use LinkedIn.

But if I’ve learned anything about success, it’s this:

The people who are rewarded always do the uncomfortable things.

Not just because the uncomfortable things are usually the path to success.

But doing the uncomfortable makes you stand out.