What LinkedIn alternatives don't suck?

Remove your 6000 connections except the people you actually know. Linkedin is what you make it, and you have made yours like Facebook.

Why would you accept 6,000 connections of mostly people you don't know and complain about it?

The best alternative is LinkedIn that you use with some restraint instead of connecting to thousands of people and opening up your profile and email to absolutely everyone.

Outside of that you probably won't find many alternatives because the large social network is the whole point - the value proposition of LinkedIn is that it's the one place where everyone goes to search for jobs and employees. A less well-known platform can't give you the same benefits by definition.

I have 200 connections, all of whom are either people I have worked with and would be happy to catch up with and work with again, or recruiters whom I have spoken directly to that are active in my area and have legit jobs to share. It has connected to me to both permanent jobs, and contract gigs.

If you just spam connect to thousands of strangers, of course it won't be useful to you. It isn't a site to build a portfolio and show off skills, it is a site that can be used every few years to reconnect with old contacts when you are seeking work.

It really depends what you use LinkedIn for.

Discovery: You say you had lots of incoming messages from recruiters but few of any use, so it sounds like you may have interest in discovery (being found by recruiters for opportunities). Unfortunately, LinkedIn is pretty much the standard and there aren't many other places recruiter can go to find candidates en masse. Angel.co is perhaps the closest thing I've seen there.

Resume - If you want to post a resume somewhere that you can quickly send a link to someone looking for it, you could of course use GitHub or any number of other options like a personal website on any platform like Angel.

Contact storage (Rolodex) - You said you had 6K connections, which is a huge number compared to most. It doesn't necessarily matter how many of them you actually knew - what matters more (it seems anyway) is how many of the 6K would be useful to you depending on what you wanted to do. If you want to find a job, or if you wanted to hire someone (which is another reason people use LinkedIn), putting out a message that has the potential to reach 6K people is pretty powerful.

Brand building - Some people use LinkedIn as a publishing method to build some kind of brand or reputation, and either publish material direct to LinkedIn or link material off the site. The competitors for that would probably be social media sites or blogging.

I invested about a decade in my LinkedIn profile, putting stacks of reasonably high quality posts and articles on there. I got up to around 20k fairly organic connections/followers. The content was good too. All in all it was a big part of my career and business.

About 2 years ago I really started to feel that LinkedIn jumped the shark. The (left leaning) virtue signalling, constant boasting, aggressive sales just destroyed the signal to noise ratio and it felt like a time sink. Their algorithm also became very unpredictable in terms of reach of your content.

I ended up putting the profile in the bin, and will concentrate on other platforms. I think YouTube in particular is still early for B2B content in the grand scheme of things.

For developers there's the "stackoverflow developer story" https://stackoverflow.com/users/story/join and for start-up related roles there is https://angel.co. I hardly encountered recruiters, while being able to keep track of my (limited) network and job opportunities.

I've moved over to Polywork. Which has a bit more of a tongue in cheek feel, but definitely feels better thank Linked in does, with a better community.

Invite link for the curious https://www.polywork.com/invite/olliejudge-hypno

My LinkedIn account has ~250 connections, all of which I either worked with or at least have been at the same company at the same time. I'd still struggle to recognize many of them but I think that's mostly due to working with most of them remotely.

My approach: do not accept random people without an introductory message, including recruiters, keep my profile visible only 2 levels deep, and clean up recruiters which I ended up not doing anything with.

Result: only a few dozen or so messages every month, most of them relevant, even if I am not interested (probably only a third with unrelated stuff).

I've deleted my LinkedIn for similar reasons years ago and never looked back. My alternative is email for strictly professional relationships, Signal / calling / texting for friends.

I deleted LinkedIn about a year ago when they made it impossible to use without adding a location to my profile. My contacts were all people I either had worked with, knew in person, or knew online.

The reduction in email spam was noticable.

Even better, the types of professional opportunities I actually find compelling hasn't decreased at all. Only the garbage outreach from people who want to put me into the beginning of lengthy hiring funnels for the wrong jobs has.

I only know it is popular in my neighboring country DE, Xing : https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/xing-german-linkedin-what-why...

LinkedIn is one of my favorite social networks

- it’s got a clear purpose (business networking)

- it’s the new defacto resume

- it’s the new business card

- people frequently share only professional interests and don’t share political news

The thing is, I’m not sure, unless you’re actively networking, why you would even log in. Just keep it dormant until you need a job or to grow your network.

Just don't use the features that you don't like (e.g. the feed) and don't accept random connections. I only accept my colleagues and no one else, even the recruiters.

Keep your profile, and update your status when you want to look for a job. That's the only feature you need from LinkedIn.

I used and loved https://otta.com. It's ways better than LinkedIn although Otta is only London focused right now.

LinkedIn for job hunting sucks, I guess. I use it for networking and for cold contacting that I don't know. For me, it does it job well.

All social networks which expose your real life suck and I hope they are just a long-living fad which will go away occasionally.

If your intention is to show off your skills and network, you're doing yourself a disservice by deleting your LinkedIn on the basis of it being "spammy like Facebook".

LinkedIn's value isn't in it's website or app, it's the fact that you, your mother, your boss, and your boss's boss all have a profile too.

If you don't want to get spammed by people in your network who treat it like a business-oriented Facebook, mute/delete them. If you don't want to receive recruiter spam, I think there's a setting for that too.

TLDR: There are no good LinkedIn alternatives

You don't need one. The problem of finding a job is a search problem, not a social network one.

I do have a Linkedin account and I use it for 2 things:

- occasionally search for jobs

- add my colleagues as connections

I never:

- read posts

- give likes

- share, follow, post anything

- enable notifications

It works great!