I absolutely hate the requirements to “dress professionally” and “act professional” and even create a LinkedIn profile for a fake “professional” persona for myself, just to convince potential employers that I meet their preconceived and utterly arbitrary idea of what a good worker is

the whole thing makes me want to take a shower - I hate it T_T

but I’m thinking about making a LinkedIn unfortunately, because it seems like I need connections in order to get any kind of job at all, and making connections offline is extremely difficult for me as someone with crippling social anxiety

@kasdeya also there are situations that solely offline networking is not enough... Linkedin is a cancer that is in metastasis stage, but is almost mandatory in this forsaken year. I had to remake my linkedin profile because "you didn't provide your profile so we couldn't verify your professional achievements, so we will not proceed with your application" :3

@kasdeya It feels bleh, but having a LinkedIn profile could lead to random recruiters hitting you up if you if you match their keywords, which might mean not having to exit the tech market entirely.

Do you have any previous coworkers you can connect with to inflate your numbers? It's a corporate mask and requires feeding your info to them, but it does work.

I"ve never needed to post or engage to get random pings. I just have a cleaned up version of my resume there.

@kasdeya And to be absolutely certain I'm not coming off wrong, the tech market suuuuucks right now and I'm sorry. I have a friend who's been searching for six months - he got an interview recently but didn't get the job. The competition is insane.