Welcome to the meat market (you're the meat)

I sometimes wonder how LinkedIn makes money off of members. 5 or 6 times in a month I'll get invites from people working for job agencies trying to get me into their network. Why I need to be in their network is never explained, but I think I've figured it out and it's all to do with that money question.

LinkedIn offers basic (free) accounts and various premium subscriptions. The basic account is fine for people hooking up with colleagues but gets vague if you search for people outside of your network, blocking information, names, companies and other info. The premium subscriptions provide various tools that let users see more information and also allows them to send messages (InMail) to people not in their network. But it still has limits on some info and how many InMails can be sent. So there is an incentive to connect to a person to get all the info, particularly stuff like phone and email address. I also suspect it unlocks my connections for them to plunder as well.

This article talks about the world from the other side of the free/premium fence, and how best to use the tools and harvest the results. Clearly agencies are seeing LinkedIn as a way to seek out talent through skill matching and search tools. Perhaps it's even transformed the way they work and they use the site far more than they might use the likes of Monster.com.

If I was job hunting I would accept these invites. After all, I am trying to get a job. But experience has taught me that accepting the invitation at other times can be pretty toxic. The main thing I get from accepting is lots of spam. It isn't even relevant spam, just some dumb keyword match thrown out at everyone with a matching resume. My resume has words like Java, C++ etc. so I would receive for jobs in Belgium, Sheffield, and basically anywhere in Europe. There is no way in Linked in to say "I am looking for work", or "I am looking for work within 25 miles of point X" though I doubt it would bother agencies to honour those settings even if they were there.

I don't mind when individual companies looking to fill roles reach out to me - that's fair enough and indicates a level of interest which goes beyond tossing out invites to some search results. But my policy now is to ignore all invites from agencies.

My attitude might change if I'm looking for work again but for the time being I appreciate the lack of spam. And besides if I want to find out about jobs then sites like Monster.com have tools to send out customised search results that I control.