LinkedIn blocks my responses?
This writing might sound a bit frustrated. And it is, a bit. Maybe I missed one or two interesting opportunities because of a communication error. But this time, I hope it wasn’t my fault. I still have much to learn about personal branding and the digital nomad lifestyle. But what I’ve realized from my IT years is: not to rely on a single provider. Nevertheless, I’ll reactivate my LinkedIn subscription and even want to be more active on digital platforms.
I remember the days when I scoured local newspapers and websites to land my first IT programming job. It was a continuous search for work, sending countless resumes and a few cover letters as well. Honestly, I only needed one job that paid enough to live on and a project I could learn from. What that was didn’t particularly matter to me. I’ve wanted to be a programmer since I was ten years old and would have done anything to get a step closer to a career in game development just to be part of creating a new world.
Needless to say, it was a period filled with painful disappointments. Out of more than 40 applications, not a single one yielded results. However, I was lucky, and a local business started an internship program. It didn’t pay enough to cover the bills, but at least I got to see some code and faced real business expectations.
Time has passed since then, but that period still leaves a bitter aftertaste. My patience for submitting applications into companies' black-hole CV collections has run out. I find it utterly pointless to attend countless technical interviews only to be left without a response at the end of it all. And if I do get a task, it turns out I have to teach colleagues, who are supposed to be seniors, everything from documentation to architectural design, security principles, mental training for remote work, and more.
LinkedIn has greatly simplified this process. I’m skeptical about all social media connections. The rule of thumb: “If it’s free, then you are the product.” But in this case, I didn’t mind. I wanted to “sell” myself, and it also helped me connect with people of similar interests. I could subscribe to content that professionally interests me and even learn from it, receiving certifications after completing tests…
My last three assignments came through LinkedIn. I didn’t care much about my profile, despite many “gurus” trying to push LinkedIn SEO on us. If I have exciting work experience, this platform helps headhunters and recruiters find me. Whether I have current assignments or not, I still receive inquiries weekly/monthly, most of which I don’t even bother responding to. It’s nothing personal. I try to minimize the time spent in the social media grind. Some offers are very frivolous, others I’m not mentally prepared for.
From a recruiter’s perspective, I imagine this is a frustrating situation. Unfortunately, this is how faceless communication works nowadays. We didn’t know until now, but now we don’t know what the other party is thinking more and more. But I didn’t really think that I would go through this experience the other way around.
I’m currently looking for new assignments and have set my profile to “open to work.” I’ve made some improvements to my profile, but I haven’t fully thrown myself into the hunt yet. Nevertheless, I still receive inquiries. There were cases when, after responding to an inquiry, I received no reply, and the position was filled in the meantime. It’s like making cold calls. I have 10 products, and if I call 100 people, I hope to sell them. If they don’t pick up or hang up, I move on to the following number.
However, recently, two people contacted me on the same day with two different positions, and both were interesting. They described what I would be working on and offered a lot of opportunities for new knowledge. More importantly, they were remote work on a contract basis and offered the hourly rate I set for myself this year. When I think about my experiences and how much I’ve educated myself in business development and scalability, it’s still ridiculously low… but “My product” is not what they’re looking for right now. The game is always about supply and demand.
I responded to them immediately, showing my interest. Then silence. Dead silence. A week went by, then two, with no response. Other times, I would have registered that I replied late, or that a performance-oriented spam recruiter tried to get a contact from me. But both inquiries were more personal. In the age of OpenAI, I can’t even be sure that my profile was actually read, but I would have appreciated AI optimization. So, I decided to investigate.
I haven’t reactivated my LinkedIn Premium subscription, so if I send a message to someone unknown, of course, I can’t send it. But if someone writes to me and they have premium, then we can talk. At least, it used to be like that. This was the beauty of the platform. We can connect with interesting people from anywhere in the world. And of course, if we pay, we can message them directly. It’s an ideal model if you’re a company trying to find employees. A company presumably has the financial resources to find a new colleague, and a potential colleague might not have the funds to pay for premium. That’s why they “sell” their bo…, I mean their professional knowledge, on this site.
Therefore, I marked both recruiters as friends. To improve the chances of nomination, I have included the following text:
“Hi
Both of them accepted my connection request. I received a reply from one: “Hey Toma, Thank you for contacting me! I haven’t received a message back no. Looking at your profile I think it was the application sec engineer?”
I’m still waiting for a response from the other. But that wasn’t what was interesting about it. They appeared twice in my LinkedIn messages. They initiated one conversation, and one was created after we became connected. For privacy reasons, I won’t share screenshots. But from a technical perspective, it looks like two separate chat channels were created, where messages aren’t synchronized. Here, I need to divert a bit towards UX. It could be said that this is because the messages went through a premium channel. Suppose there’s no delay, guaranteed delivery, larger file transfer capabilities, scheduling assistance, malware/virus checks on attachments, etc. Then, maybe I would subscribe (And I will). But if I responded to the inquiry, why didn’t the other party receive my message? And more importantly, why didn’t I get a notification about this?
We shouldn’t be surprised. Every company wants to increase its revenue. That’s their job. As users, it’s our job to decide whether we’re willing to spend money on a service. When I encounter marketing content, I often become skeptical. If you subscribe, “you’ll have 2.4x more opportunities”. Where did this number come from? Of course, it’s statistics. And “I only believe in the statistics that I’ve falsified myself.” In this case, perhaps the number of blocked responses contributed to this incredibly high difference. I don’t believe such a significant effect would exist in a free chat application unless there’s a catch, especially since it’s enough to become connected with the other party. And here comes sales, or upselling. It would be sufficient to attach an automatic message to such a premium conditional message, e.g., “This message was received through a LinkedIn premium channel. If you want to ensure your messages are delivered, activate your Premium trial.”
If this situation sounds familiar to you, feel free to share this article. It might help reduce your own and others' frustrations.
From my side, I’ve learned enough to consider the possible operational principles of a platform. And I have prepared a few backup plans on how to bridge any “service outages,” such as:
- It sounds like something from the 2000s, but owning a blog is still the foundation of online presence. This way, I own my content, and if I don’t like the provider, I can move elsewhere.
- LinkedIn is a good place to advertise ourselves. But here, too, we need to learn the basics of SEO. Hey, that’s why I made a passport.
- I need a secure communication channel that I can share and change if necessary so I don’t miss out on interesting opportunities.
- If I don’t receive a response to an inquiry, I’m not shy about following up with a short message.