Transcription
According to LinkedIn's hiring data, less than .1% of the platform's job applications actually result in a hire, with over a quarter of all of its job listings now estimated to be ghost jobs. And while 54% of posts have become AI generated slob, LinkedIn has become so flooded with fake profiles that it may have more foreign intelligence bots than entry-level job postings, raising the question, how did LinkedIn become such a corporate hell hole?
While a firm handshake and a strong work ethic were once treated as the most important characteristics in how ordinary Americans could build stable lives, afford a home, raise a family, and retire with dignity, this modern expectation that your worth is defined entirely by a LinkedIn profile has fundamentally placed all power into the hands of corporate America, leaving job seekers forced to participate on a platform manipulated by misaligned incentives and exposing them to what may be the largest case of corporate surveillance in digital history. A level of corporate rot that was financially engineered to rule the job market.
Founded by Reed Hoffman in 2002, LinkedIn's main purpose was simply to digitize the rolodex. Unlike the general purpose social networks of the era, LinkedIn was deliberately narrow and boring, focused on expanding access to economic opportunity that had traditionally been gatekept by recruiters, corporate hierarchies, or even just plain luck. And while LinkedIn generated most of its early revenue through premium tools designed to help professionals expand their network and discover new opportunities, as the platform grew, its business model shifted away from serving users and towards selling access to them.
Under CEO Jeff Weiner, recruiting products rapidly became LinkedIn's dominant source of revenue as employers, recruiters, and hiring departments proved willing to pay essentially any price for direct access to millions of workers. And following Microsoft's 26.2 $2 billion acquisition, 2016, those incentives only accelerated as LinkedIn fundamentally became the default gateway between workers and economic opportunity, creating an ecosystem where employers became dependent on LinkedIn for access to talent. Job seekers became dependent simply to remain visible within the highly competitive modern hiring process. While Microsoft gained unprecedented access to both professional and personal data, and despite becoming the dominant platform for professional networking, and I would even argue a monopoly, LinkedIn never actually created a better alternative to the hiring process itself.
Instead, it convinced society that traditional in-person networking had become obsolete while offering little more than a digital version of the exact same resumeuméd driven system that already existed. Meaning that LinkedIn's true product evolved into the perception that professional success, career growth, and economic opportunity cannot be achieved without it.
To prove this, LinkedIn's own hiring data shows that there are roughly 11,000 job applications submitted every minute, while hires average just 6 to 8 per minute, resulting in less than .1% of all applications, ultimately leading to employment, a figure that falls even further for those relying on easy apply. For the job openings candidates are actually applying for.
Resumeé Genius's analysis of government job data found that roughly 30% of job openings never resulted in a hire, meaning that more than 2.2 million roles remain posted despite never materializing, with LinkedIn alone potentially hosting as many as 1.7 million of those ghost job listings. Meaning that despite LinkedIn positioning itself as the foundation of the modern hiring process, much of the opportunity it claims to provide either never actually existed in the first place or is overwhelmingly concentrated among those who already possess it.
For the jobs not tainted by outright deceit, LinkedIn has still reshaped hiring into a process that has very little to do with actual qualifications. While roughly 75% of applications are never even seen by a human, and those that do make it through receive just 6 to 8 seconds of attention, 40% of recruiters now admit to hiring candidates based solely on LinkedIn profiles. Well, at least until a candidate signals they actually need a job.
Nolan Church, a former Google recruiter, has called LinkedIn's open to work banner the biggest red flag in hiring. While Lindsey Mustain, a former Amazon recruiter, argues that recruiters want to want a candidate because hiring is fundamentally about power dynamics and appearing available shifts that balance unfavorably. And the same logic is especially prevalent if, god forbid, you lose your job.
Recruiters treat employment gaps as massive red flags with 77% saying they indicate a need for additional training, 74% associating them with outdated skills, and 70% assuming unemployment reflects lower productivity. LinkedIn's datadriven system then reinforces these biases by suppressing profiles without present listed, placing early career workers at an even greater disadvantage while also encouraging misrepresentation, performative gratitude, and a comparison culture that destroys the definition of what it even means to be qualified.
And while LinkedIn has failed to deliver on its promise of expanding economic opportunity, unless of course you want to spend $39.99 a month on LinkedIn Premium Career, which supposedly gives users a 43% higher likelihood of actually receiving a message from a recruiter, one thing that LinkedIn has become exceptionally good at is serving as one of the most effective intelligence gathering tools in modern history.
Beginning around 2017, Germany's domestic intelligence agency warned that Chinese operatives posing as recruiters, consultants, and other seemingly legitimate professionals had contacted more than 10,000 German officials through LinkedIn in an effort to gather personal and professional information. Similar campaigns later emerged in the United Kingdom, where MI5 estimated that Chinese intelligence services had approached as many as 20,000 people through fake recruitment opportunities. By 2018, US counter intelligence officials described China's LinkedIn campaign as super aggressive with fake accounts targeting Americans who had access to sensitive government or corporate information.
However, within the last few weeks, the scale and sophistication of these operations reached unprecedented levels with a joint five eyes bulletin titled "safeguarding our secrets." The intelligence agencies of the United States, United Kingdom, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand warned that Chinese intelligence services were ramping up their activity on LinkedIn to target government officials, military personnel, defense contractors, academics, and others with potential access to sensitive information through seemingly legitimate jobs and networking opportunities. One reported fake job advertisement drew more than 400 CVs, with the overwhelming majority belonging to US military and government personnel with security clearances.
And while China may be the most aggressive example, estimates suggest that there could be anywhere between 1 and 5 million foreign propaganda or intelligence link bots operating across LinkedIn at any given time, proving that while LinkedIn may struggle to connect real workers with actual employment opportunities, the platform could not be more useful for foreign intelligence agencies.
And while you would think that foreign adversaries stealing information would be of their utmost concern, the reality is that LinkedIn may have been conducting one of the largest corporate espionage operations in digital history on its own. Researchers from a European nonprofit known as Fairl claim to have reverse engineered LinkedIn's production JavaScript to expose what they are calling "BrowserGate." While LinkedIn disputes many of these allegations, Fairlink argues that the platform has been secretly monitoring users' browsers every time they visit the site.
According to their findings, LinkedIn scans more than 6,000 browser extensions while collecting technical information used to create potentially the most detailed fingerprint of how users browse the internet in digital history with the combined user base of those extensions totaling roughly 405 million people. Fair claims that this data can allegedly reveal sensitive personal information far exceeding regular data breaches ranging from religion, political beliefs, and ideological views to health conditions, disabilities, and other highly personal characteristics. They further alleged LinkedIn collects information about password managers, VPNs, ad blockers, security software, and other tools installed on a user's device, allowing that information to be tied directly back to a user's personal identity.
And while you may think that you have nothing to hide, regardless of whether you do or not, this is a platform that is supposed to help people achieve economic opportunity. Instead, BrowserGate alleges LinkedIn may have assembled one of the most detailed profiles imaginable of not only who you are professionally, but what tools you use, what interests you have, what struggles you face personally, and potentially even the most private aspects of your life, all without any accurate mention in its privacy policy.
And just think of the ramifications that even an ounce of that information could have on your entire career if it ever spread beyond your own privacy.
Yet, despite all of this, millions upon millions of workers will continue to feel obligated to participate with some even in the comments as we speak actually defending LinkedIn. LinkedIn never solved the hiring process and in many ways arguably made it worse. It never meaningfully improved networking, turning what was once personal relationships and genuine professional connections into something dominated by AI slop. And it certainly has not created a better path to economic opportunity. The only thing it truly accomplished was convincing society that none of those things could actually be achieved without it.
And just because I couldn't help myself, I wanted to end this with one final nail in the coffin. To demonstrate just how detached LinkedIn's culture has become from normal human behavior, I'm going to show you three LinkedIn posts and have you guess which one is real. The other two were generated by Chachi PT using the prompt, "make a LinkedIn post that is unbelievably cringey from a human perspective, but is totally something that would be posted on LinkedIn."
Number one: Salesforce is doing a fresh round of layoffs, but employees are happy. After all, they are getting 30 weeks of severance pay. They can take 15 weeks of paid vacation and still have enough time to look for a job. Salesforce is not actually laying people off. It is offering a temporary paid retirement.
Number two: Congratulations to the world's first trillionaire, Elon Musk. Elon has done more for humanity than countless millions and we should be grateful for his contributions. However, my humorous side took over and I thought about the following. What if Elon, Bill Gates, and Jeff Bezos were out to dinner together? Elon stepped away from the table to use the restroom before the bill came. While Elon was gone, Gates said to Bezos, "Let Elon get it. He's made of money." "Sorry, my brain is working overtime." Angled laughing face.
Number three: Last week I had an interview. Here's how it went.
Interviewer: Tell us about yourself.
Me: I solve problems before they cost money. That's what I do and that's why I'm here.
Interviewer: How would you present a complex idea to a board that's short on time?
Me: Three sentences. The problem, the solution, the ask. Everything else is noise.
Interviewer: How do you stay this sharp under pressure?
Me: Pressure is where most people hesitate and where I switch on.
Today, I received the feedback. Adam is one of the most articulate and commercially minded candidates we've met. His answers weren't rehearsed. They were precise. He thinks in impact, not paragraphs. Under pressure, he doesn't wobble. He sharpens. Adam isn't just qualified. He's the person you want in front of a board, in a crisis, or in any moment where clarity and judgment matter. I don't share this to boast. I share it because clarity, composure, and commercial thinking aren't soft skills. They're leadership skills.
>> Oh, BROTHER, THIS GUY STINKS. >> AND THE unfortunate reality is that all of those were real. Those were all LinkedIn posts. My favorite one was the third one, and I actually had to condense that. That goes to show you how uh confident that that specific individual was on his capabilities and uh the lesson that we should learn from him.
Now, I am all for making fun or or discussing the absurd nature of the LinkedIn lunatics and the overall LinkedIn and corporate culture that we're participating in. I think it's disgusting and I think it's embarrassing and I think in many ways it's very degrading. Um, but I think it's important that we actually discuss why that's happening.
The job market in itself is so unbelievably difficult. You know, you do 50 applications and you get you get you don't even get rejected. You just get ghosted and you don't know what's real. You don't know if you're being if you you apply for something and actually that's just your data getting stolen. You've been unemployed for 6 months. You spent all of this money to get a degree. Whoopsy daisies. It doesn't mean anything. You know, all of these things are so unbelievably difficult in themselves.
But now we're going to force you to participate in the institutionalized gateway that is LinkedIn, the corrupt and decaying uh really just symbolic representation of corporate America that you're almost forced to walk through because there's going to be many graduates watching this video that you were not able to graduate or pass your class until you had a LinkedIn profile. And when 40% of uh recruiters are only accepting people based on their LinkedIn profile, well, if you want to have a shot of participating, you kind of have to have it.
And so now you're having to experience just the job market in itself. And so then you go on LinkedIn, which you already know is just filled with this this cringy, degrading slop, but then you recognize, wow, the majority of this is just AI slop. That makes it even worse. Oh, the majority of these job applications or these job opportunities are just fake also. Oh, turns out that uh I'm also having to compete against uh these massive uh Chinese espionage campaigns. And uh to make things even better, allegedly, right, I don't want to get in trouble. Allegedly uh allegedly, it just so happens that this platform is doing one of the largest corporate espionage uh cases in in digital history.
And what makes this even worse is this rampant pursuit of credentialism. Right? I have somebody that said that my channel means nothing because I don't have a college degree. That I am lying to you because I don't have the credentials to back up what it is that I'm stating in these videos. Now, I've had that said from multiple people, older people, college graduates. I get it all the time. And so it doesn't matter that, you know, I I work about 60 hours a week. It doesn't matter that it's 2:36 in the morning, 2:35 in the morning. It doesn't matter that, you know, besides doing Father's Day this morning, I have worked all day. Um, but because I don't have a college degree, my ability to actually do something doesn't mean anything to some people, right? You know, obviously not everybody.
But that's the real issue is that as LinkedIn has kind of and these other platforms have kind of made emails and Slack and you know buffing up your resume and all these other things as kind of the priority. The people that have been able to game the system that understood that the hardest worker in the room will not be the most successful as the person that plays the game recognize that the game now is this digitized version of networking. And so you're successful if you had five meetings on your calendar. It doesn't matter if those meetings didn't actually do anything. But because you said you were going to do a lot of things, now that's successful.
We have so many people that are in power that have no ability to do anything. They have no idea how to do it. And that's why they network so much is they're looking for the doers. But the reality is is that the doers are doing something and the networkers, the sers are just over here giving each other's pats on the back. And so what happens is you have all of these people that are unemployed, struggling, facing just decay after decay after decay after decay that just want an opportunity to do their job. And they can't because we are being run by a bunch of people that have no idea what to do, and they just want to talk about things.
And so what is it that we're supposed to do? Now, I personally would say that we need a massive campaign that is uh blacklisting LinkedIn. I think that we need to see this recent case about the uh about the uh BrowserGate. We need to see what happens with that. Um, and then we need to stop saying, "Yeah, I really hate LinkedIn, but you know, check out my profile. I just got, you know, 15% more impressions." Like, we don't you don't want to be like that. You don't want to hate something until it starts working for you because now you're part of the problem. And I I think that we really have to recognize that.
And what we have to do is that we have to begin in our own lives finding ways to humanize things again, humanize society, go back into in-person networking, in-person things that we can do. Um, you know, find ways to be able to maybe find job opportunities within a local men's group or, you know, whatever the case is. I understand that it is difficult to to go do these things, but that that's where it is. The the treasure is not on the other side of our phone screen or our laptop or whatever the case is. It's in real life, but we've been tricked into thinking that we can't do anything unless it's on the digital world. It's failing us in so many regards. It is so broken.
But um I don't know. I I think it I think for me personally, it's very frustrating. I really can't stand this. I really do not like how there aren't more people stepping up and saying, "Yeah, this is broken." And it's not just like cringy, funny, weird, gross. Like no, this is corrupt. This is impacting people's lives, their livelihoods, their kids' lives, so our future, and you know, it just continues to keep going on.
So, I don't know. Um, I do want to provide something. Um, I I've recognized that I have a very large veteran community and so I just first want to say thank you all so much for your service and I I really appreciate you. But I do have a resource for veterans and military spouses called Major Talent.
Major Talent provides resumeé development, interview preparation and feedback, job placement and employer connections, and marketplace opportunities. I actually got in contact with Tim, a former veteran and the founder of Major Talent through the Veterans Day documentary I did on my Patreon. And after having talked with him and having had many conversations with those of you that are veterans, one of the biggest things that was really brought to my attention is a difficulty of adjusting back to civilian life, but most importantly the isolation that you really feel a part of that.
Um, I think that Major Talent is not only a wonderful way to be able to begin building a community around that, um, but it also gives you actual opportunities to have career advancement and economic opportunities. Um, so I I I can't recommend that enough and I really like working with uh with Tim. I think he's a great guy.
Um, but beyond that, I just really want to hit home the fact that we really have to begin centering these things around people again. Um, people are what matters. We are not each other's enemies and we can't be defending these corporate, greedy, disgusting platforms. You know, would it maybe be in my best interest professionally to have one? Yeah, probably. But God, does it suck so much, you know? I just I cannot shovel that in my mouth and turn around and say, "Thank you." You know? I just I don't have that in me. I I think I care too much about my uh my morals and my integrity to to to do that personally, you know. Um and that's just that that that's just kind of me.
So, you know, let me know what what kind of your plans are with LinkedIn, I guess, and uh just try to find ways in your own life to to just kind of rehumanize things. I think that that's really important. Um and you know, I'm trying to do the best that I can on on a digital platform, right? Uh I'm trying to use it for the positive that it was, I guess, intended to be. Um but I don't know. I don't know how I'm doing. I hope that I'm doing a good job.
So, uh if this did provide value to you, I'd greatly appreciate it if you uh like the video and subscribe if you haven't already done so. Um, and I'm just going to keep doing the best that I can. So, thank you all so much. Until next time.