I first created a LinkedIn account four years ago during my freshman year of college after professors strongly encouraged us to join the platform. They framed it as a valuable networking tool that lets recruiters easily find you, learn about your experience and stay connected with you throughout your professional career.
As my professional and personal life evolved, so did LinkedIn.
Somewhere along the way, it stopped being enough to simply update your profile with a new role or accomplishment. Now, every milestone seems to require a multi-paragraph reflection about how transformative the journey was to get there. Scroll through LinkedIn today, and you’ll likely see the same structure repeated: a humble beginning, a story of struggle and a neatly packaged lesson at the end.
The shift isn’t in the platform itself, but in how people feel pressured to use it.
The platform shifted from a space for connection into one driven by performance. The expectation is no longer just to share updates, but to turn every experience into something that resonates, engages, and circulates.
Just a few days ago, I came across a post from a recruiter describing how a senior in college had cold-called him in hopes of landing a job. In the post, the recruiter went on at length about how impressed he was by the student’s creativity and initiative.
The story was framed almost like a career lesson, an example of bold networking paying off. But the post ended with a line that stuck with me: “It didn’t get him an interview, but it did get my attention.”
The whole story felt less like a genuine moment of professional connection and more like another carefully packaged anecdote designed to perform well on LinkedIn.
Publicly shaming prospects has become one of many trends on LinkedIn. It is evident that people now care less about tailoring their profiles and posts to achieve professional success and more about mastering the algorithm.
As a marketing student, I understand the strategy behind it.
Professionals want to increase impressions on their profiles and expand their reach, so their posts and profiles are seen by more people. But as a college senior entering the workforce, the pressure to turn every experience into LinkedIn “clickbait” is honestly irritating.
Don’t get me wrong, LinkedIn is still an incredibly useful tool. It allows students to connect with professionals, discover new opportunities, and learn more about industries they might not have access to.
However, when every scroll through LinkedIn reveals another polished success story, it’s easy for students to feel like everyone else has their career figured out. In reality, most people are still navigating uncertainty, rejection and trial and error; things that rarely make it into the LinkedIn highlight reel.
Take it from me, a senior trying to land a job after graduation. It only takes one scroll through LinkedIn to start feeling discouraged.
Instead of inspiration, the feed can quickly turn into a stream of reminders about everything you might be doing wrong in your job search.
There are endless posts explaining the “right” way to network, the “right” way to write a resume and the “right” way to approach recruiters. On top of that, I often see recruiters posting job opportunities where the only way to receive the application link is to like or comment on the post first.
While it may seem harmless, it often feels less like an effort to help candidates and more like a push for engagement. Every like and comment boosts the post in LinkedIn’s algorithm, increasing the recruiter’s visibility and reach.
For students genuinely trying to find work, the process can start to feel less like professional networking and more like being part of someone else’s content strategy.
As students entering the workforce, we’re constantly told to build our personal brands and turn every experience into a story worth sharing. But networking doesn’t need to be performative to be effective and professional growth doesn’t have to be packaged into a viral post to be real.
Sometimes the most meaningful connections come from something much simpler, a genuine interaction, an honest update or the admission that, like many of us just starting out, we’re still figuring it all out.