I don’t have a LinkedIn and it has impaired my job hunts in the past but I always worry that creating one now (without the references of colleagues from decades of past work) would look worse than not having one?
If anybody used to enjoy working with you and they know of something it, should be easy enough from then on.
It used to be a thing of the past - people don't seem to bother now. Go ahead and create the profile. Search and connect with your colleagues.
And arguably even a negative signal. Productive people have jobs to do instead of grinding Monopoly karma. Yes, this absolutely includes LinkedIn thought leadership.
I know MS and recruiters love to push the 'it matters' line, but I'd ask the reader -- who would you rather hire: someone who wow'd in an interview or someone with LinkedIn flair?
Who would you rather interview: someone who has a great resume, and a strong LinkedIn profile, and connections to a strong peer community who can endorse them, or a faceless rando that shows up in your inbox with a PDF, amongst thousands of others, with zero referrals?
I'm not endorsing LI grind -- I too hate it, but ignore at your own peril. OP seems to be in a rather precarious situation, so maybe it would help being a bit less dogmatic.
As I said:
> anything past where you've worked on LinkedIn is a waste of time
Because everything on LinkedIn literally exists to be farmed. And why wouldn't it? LinkedIn's customers are recruiters. Users are the currency.
OP would be better served by actually networking with their peers. Not in app-mediated (and -monetized) ways, but in normal social human ways.
Sometimes it's like people forgot how to say "Hey, want to grab a coffee and catch up? What's been going on with you?"
Exactly this. And recruiters are the ones finding candidates and scheduling interviews.
You may not like it. I certainly don't. But that's the world we live in.
> "Hey, want to grab a coffee and catch up?"
This and the comment above are not at odds. If you're looking for a job like OP, at minimum you should do both.
Wrong question. This is not about the hiring stage.
Who would I rather move on to a phone screen: someone with an empty or nonexistent linkedin profile, or someone with a profile which matches their resume and has many connections to other people who worked at the same companies?
While I hate to have to say it is the latter, that's where we are today with AI-generated fake resumes.
I have 344 resumes left to review tonight. Those that don't match their linkedin profile history have no chance (unless they are a direct colleague referral).
> anything past where you've worked on LinkedIn is a waste of time
Putting your work history in LinkedIn is the maximum amount of effort you should make. Any additional effort, beyond that, is a waste of your time.
I hardly use LinkedIn, but it does show work history. As someone else said there was a flurry of “endorsements” but I haven’t seen many since.
I would suggest creating the linkedin profile but be sure to fully populate the job descriptions for each job (or as far back as you care to go) and spend some time looking up past colleagues from each one and send them invites to connect.
I'm finding that a completely blank linkedin profile (listing only companies but zero detail) is a bigger red flag than not having a linkedin profile.
But having a profile with job description info and a network of connections from each job adds credibility. When a resume looks borderline suspicious, I dig through the persons connections in linkedin to see if it looks like they really worked at each of those places. Even better if I find any shared connections, which is a stronger signal that I'm looking at a real person not an AI bot.
Also, building that network of connections can be a source of job leads on its own.
I'm in a terrible position for when I need to find a normal job, and comments like this don't let me forget it!
You can also make one, add people, and then ask for a few references. "I just finally made a linkedin in 2025 on a lark" is a perfectly cromulent icebreaker/reason to ask.