Should I delete my LinkedIn profile?

No, don't delete it. - You have no other presence online for anyone who wants to google you, and can use LinkedIn to develop an online image. - Not knowing how to play the networking game (LinkedIn is part of it) is one thing that will keep you in low wage, low level jobs. Demonstrating you know how to network (minimally: LinkedIn is Level Basic) is important. - Sure you are applying now to jobs at the university, but what happens if they don't pan out? Where are you looking elsewhere? - I'll save you the details as they are in older posts, but personally LinkedIn has saved my butt twice already for getting jobs. Sit down and fill it in. Most of the information is already on your resume, so you can do it with minimal work. If you find a job posting on LinkedIn you want to apply for (you have looked at these, right?), you can apply directly with the information in your profile and stored resume on LinkedIn. So filling out their forms eliminates later ones. All of the people you are worried about will have this information from your resume (managers) or if they wanted to ask you (friends). Develop the profile, have someone you trust look it over, and then leave it alone until it's time for another overhaul. Sign up for some groups if you want, to look for more job opportunities or read professional advice or just demonstrate interest in the fields you are applying to (e.g. group of the university you are applying to work with.) Important: Add a PICTURE. The picture humanizes you in a very important way that the profile alone cannot do. For what it's worth, people who are not closely connected to you can usually not see all of your job information or even all of your full name. You control who you are connected to, and can therefore deny all connections by non-professional contacts. This is entirely in your control. About leaking data: the impression I get from your description is beyond privacy concerns and bordering on weird, and I say that as someone who generally takes care of my own. I have a small presence on social media (NO facebook, twitter, etc) and use LinkedIn and a couple other things as my online profiles.

I am in your shoes, in that I'm applying for jobs and recently had a small meltdown about LinkedIn/my internet presence/the whole 'networking' bullshit in general. My feelings on LinkedIn in particular were very similar to yours - I don't mind strangers finding my online profiles, but there are a couple of people from my past where the thought of them looking at my stuff online makes me shudder. I had to go to a mandatory class on networking, which brought matters to a head, but I feel like I'm in a better place with this stuff now. I decided to keep my LinkedIn profile, and I filled it out so that it's a mirror of my CV. It really didn't take as long as I was afraid it would, since I mostly just copy/pasted stuff from the text document. I found these advantages in the process: - filling out all my achievements made me feel pretty good about them. You say that your jobs haven't been very impressive, but LI also has space for volunteer activities, projects and interests, languages and skills. It gives you more space to describe what you do and why you do it than a CV or resumé would. - LI profiles are pretty highly ranked in Google, which means you can easily control the first hit for your name, without having to run around the place sanitising your publicly-available information. (Good for me, since I lean towards the paranoid side on these issues.) - There's more space on LI for my various jobs and projects than I get on a two-page CV, which means I can include research jobs, data-entry jobs and coffee-shop jobs alike. This makes it a superset of my CV. I worry less about what potential employers will find out about me, since it's all up there and the data-entry guy will find out my data-entry experience, etc. I don't really think people pay much attention to the LinkedIn profiles of their friends on there. When your friends endorse you for skills, it's not because they're surfing your profile but because LI has thrown up a window with your face and a randomly-selected skill in front of them, and they're clicking "Yes" to get it to go away, rather than "No", because they feel well-disposed to you. ***You can also add skills that are more current/useful for you into your list of skills. These will then get endorsements for the same reason.*** I don't think you need to engage with the site in terms of commenting, messaging, whatever else they want you to do. It's okay for your page to be basically static. In all sympathy and cameraderie, I think you are making too big a deal out of this, just like I did. All an LI page is is a sign that someone with your name and skills does exist. It probably stops the people who search for you looking much further, since everything (you want them to know) is right there. Job-searching sucks, I know - keep your chin up.

One person's data point that LinkedIn "doesn't matter" isn't necessarily representative of the entire hiring process for an organization.

I think you're severely overestimating how hard it is to throw up a passable LinkedIn profile, as well as how much about you such a profile would reveal. What are these bizarre privacy considerations? You don't want your linked friends to know that you worked for Acme Corp as a Chief Widget Designer between 2008 and 2011 where your core competencies included maximizing efficiency in the widget design process as well as supervising a team of 5? Why not??

Most recruiters actively look at LinkedIn and other social media profiles for their candidates. Deleting the account may eliminate you from the running for a position if other people in the running for that job have a fleshed-out profile and yours does not. And if you have a minimalist profile that doesn't even match the resume in-hand? That doesn't really give the best impression, either. One of my favorite writers on the subject has http://www.jobjenny.com/the-blog/category/linkedin. The import tool for LinkedIn isn't going to take you hours, unless your resume is formatted in a non-standard way or something odd like that. And if that's the case, you really should think about reformatting it. You might also try something like https://www.vizify.com/ as a way to get a head-start on branding yourself for recruiters.

I used LinkedIn quite a lot in a recent job search: 1. I searched for companies and places I wanted to work (e.g. Cincinnati FooFactory). This told me whether I had any links to that company / place. So if a friend of a former colleague works there, I can ask for an introduction and possibly have a conversation with them about working at FooFactory, what the culture is like, how big the subfoo department is, etc. 2. Did the same thing with fields and location (e.g. Cincinnati foo production) 3. When interviewing, I looked up the hiring manager to see if I had links to them. If so, I'd contact my link and ask them about the hiring manager. "I see you worked with Jo at Foogle, what can you tell me about him?" Obviously a lot depends on how close you are with your link, but in some cases it can be very helpful. 4. You can also use it to get an idea about a hiring manager's background and current role before an interview, and this can come in handy. 5. Recruiters contacted me through LinkedIn regularly, either via common connections or by searching keywords related to my job experience. It takes some experience to know when to response and when to ignore, but working with recruiters did help my job search. It sounds like you feel down on yourself about your experience, but shutting down your LI profile isn't likely to help you out. You *can* slowly and steadily update your profile. There is nothing wrong with your work history, but if you sit down and think about it you are likely to remember some times when you took initiative and solved problems. That should definitely go on your profile. Any volunteer experience, extra skills, professional organizations - you can fit in a lot more there than you can on your resume. And connect to more people. This shouldn't be difficult - people are by and large eager to connect. Good luck!

Just wanted to say I agree with you that LinkedIn endorsements are really corny, and I can remember giggling on more than one occasion when I see somebody I've worked with who is endorsed for skills they either clearly do not have, or are endorsed by someone who is clearly not qualified to be endorsing anybody in that skill. However, I wouldn't delete your account entirely because of that. You should just disable endorsements - under "Edit Profile", go to "Skills & Expertise", hit the "Edit" button, and you get the option to hide the endorsements.

I've never had a Linkedin account and have gotten two jobs on my own since its advent. People who think they can't get a job without a Linkedin account are pretty much the same people who think they can't get a date without an OkCupid account. If you are a good qualified candidate no one will give a shit.

I get folks contacting me trying to lure me out of my job all the time on LinkedIn. This is a feature, not a bug. For all the reasons above, work to make a fantastic profile, listing your skills and talents if your jobs don't really reflect them. Get friends to recommend and endorse you.