Linkedin is terrible for remote jobs
Hey,
I'm Sergio Pereira, and this is the Remote Work newsletter 👋
Last week I told you about my recent injury, and how remote work allows me to continue working as before, despite being unable to walk much for a few months. It would have been very different if I had a physical job, or if I simply was forced to commute to an office. Glad I can work from home.
Today's edition is for everyone applying for remote jobs, and for those receiving those remote applications:
• You're probably using Linkedin for that. Well, you shouldn't!
Let me tell you a few reasons why Linkedin is not great for remote jobs, and how you can use your effort more efficiently:
It wasn't built for remote jobs
When I'm hiring, if I post a job on Linkedin, I have a field to select a city. Even if the job is fully remote, and the company doesn't have an office. I still have to select a city, which is non-sense.
This way of tying jobs to specific cities sucks even more when you're a candidate looking for remote jobs. If you select your city, you'll be shown only jobs from local companies that allow you to work from home some days.
That's terrible. For most people, looking for remote jobs means finding the best international jobs that allow you to work from your current country and city. In order to do that on Linkedin, you have to select cities in the US, UK, Australia, etc one by one, and apply to the remote jobs in each of them.
The frustration is similar for companies recruiting remote workers globally. Their goal is to find the best candidates around the world, but with such constraints in the way Linkedin Jobs is designed, most won't even apply. It's a terrible user experience for both recruiter and applicant.
Too much spam
Linkedin is the most popular professional network, and the jobs section has a huge amount of traffic. As such, it has a big amount of jobs, and also a big pool of applicants for each of those jobs. This should be good news, but that isn't necessarily the case.
Lots of jobs are not actual jobs. As a job seeker, you'll spend your time applying, but you'll never get a reply. Many jobs on Linkedin are either lead funnels for outsourcing agencies and recruitment companies, they want to build a database of condidates to possibly reach out to in the future. But if you're looking for a job right now, that's not going to cut it.
The popularity also has downsides for companies recruiting legit remote roles. While it feels great to have hundreds of applicants real quick, it sucks to realise that many of those applicants are either fake profiles or bots from outsourcing agencies and recruitment companies looking for new client leads.
In a nutshell, the noise on Linkedin can be draining.
You'll spend countless hours on the platform, either scrolling through jobs (if you're an applicant), or scrolling through candidates (if you're a recruiter). You'll send lots of messages. But sadly, you won't get replies for most of them.
These alternative are better:
1/ Network and get remote jobs to come to you
This is ideal, of course. But you need to put in the hard work of time building your network by:
• Writing in public
• Contributing to open source
• Fostering relationships with potential employers
It's challenging, but it pays off in the long run!
2/ Apply directly and ahead of other candidates
Once companies post their job openings on mass job boards, it's likely they'll attract hundreds of applicants. When you apply, there's already a huge pile of CVs and jobs get really competitive at that point.
Ideally, you should apply to opportunities before others. Companies usually post an opportunity on their jobs page first. If they fail to get enough applicants they'll then list it on job boards after a week or two.
There wasn't a great place online listing all jobs pages of remote companies, so I built this list with 1200+ remote companies hiring right now. Have a look!
3/ Use remote-first job boards
There are hundreds of job boards, and selecting the most relevant ones to spend your time is an important decision. Certainly NOT Linkedin!
These are 3 job boards I recommend for remote jobs.
In case you're actively looking for a remote job, I'm launching soon my first ever cohort based course and private community, where I'm breaking down my knowledge into modules, and will help a batch of remote job seekers find a remote job. The launch will be private, join the waitlist and stay tuned.
Thanks for reading this newsletter until the end. You can read all past editions here. Make sure to share the link with your friends and colleagues so they can read it too.
See you next Tuesday,
Sergio Pereira,
Startup CTO & Remote Work Lover
