LinkedIn Shouldn't Have a Desperate Frame and You Shouldn't Look That Needy

06 Nov 2024 #misc

Hiring in 2024 has been slow.

I know! I was “let go” in February and tried to find a job for a couple of months until I gave up and decided to jump solo.

AI, high interest rates, or anything else have changed the job market. There aren’t as many open applications as years before. And the few ones opened get flooded with applications. Pure radio silence after you apply.

Before, you only needed the right keywords in your LinkedIn headline to get recruiters offering you “life-changing opportunities.” I cringe while typing those words and remembering all those messages.

Those days seem to be gone.

The other day the LinkedIn algorithm showed me a post of a young designer showing her profile picture around a ribbon that said “Desperate.” It was her idea to complement the “Hiring” and “Open to work” ribbons or photo frames or whatever LinkedIn called them.

(If you wrote that post, I totally understand. I did the same thing in a different way a couple of months ago.)

It’s desperate seeing a bank account going to zero and having bills to pay.

Writing “I’m desperate and need money. Please give me a job” in a LinkedIn post is the equivalent of wearing dirty clothes, growing a beer, and extend your hand in the middle of a busy street.

Nobody is going to give you a job for being desperate and looking needy. Other LinkedIn users aren’t going to take money out of their pockets to help you either.

Instead of giving companies and hiring managers homework and looking desperate and needy, turn around the equation and give away ideas.

For the young designer with the “Desperate” ribbon idea:

• Find 10 companies you’d like to work with
• Create a brand redesign for each company. Show how you’d change colors, fonts, and logo. Do it like you’re being paid for it.
• For each redesign, publish a post showing your redesign and tag the company and the head of the creative team (or a hiring manager or the head of the team that hires designers inside a company)

Even if the companies you’re redesigning don’t reply, others will see your work and skills in action. You don’t have to say “Trust me, I design.” You’re showing your work instead.

After being laid off, I sent my CV to as many places as I could find that needed a code monkey. Even I applied to a FAANG when I rejected that idea early in my career.

Eventually, I got a reply. And after the first contact and a signed agreement, the head of the company told me: “I don’t know where to put you.” I was waiting for the company to close a new client. In the meantime, I gave them homework.

I knocked at their doors and said “Please give me work. I do anything.” That was the implicit message I sent when I filled out an application from in their company page and sent my CV.

I should have knocked at their doors with 10 ideas, like I recently learned from James Altucher.

A professional never begs. And, no. LinkedIn shouldn’t have a “Desperate” ribbon.