LinkedIn Has Lost Its Social-Networking Luster

I feel like I've been duped. Nearly five years ago, I joined LinkedIn because it was a social networking site geared towards business professionals.

The idea was simple; users create a network of past and present contacts from your higher education and professional work history. By doing so, it opens up new avenues for possible career advancements, partnerships and professional relationships.

So why does it now feel like I've joined a never-ending job board merry-go-round?

The Promise: A Better Way to Network

LinkedIn was my first social network -- long before I ever thought about joining Facebook. I was nearing the end of my MBA program, and LinkedIn was a unique way to establish relationships with other like-minded professionals from my past and present.

Thinking that several of my fellow MBA graduates would likely go on to be successful, I thought it would be wise to establish a long-term connection with them. Instead of exchanging business cards that are likely to be lost, we used LinkedIn as a way to keep tabs on each other.

For the first few years after joining LinkedIn, the site really met my professional social network needs. I was staying in touch with the progress of the contacts I wished to maintain, and LinkedIn was regularly updating their site by adding useful features to help facilitate these relationships. And because of its usefulness, membership continued to grow worldwide.

Here Come the Headhunters

Then I noticed something strange begin to happen. I began receiving "connection" requests from headhunters that I either barely or never knew. Recruiters began to realize that LinkedIn had better job candidates than any job board could ever offer. After all, LinkedIn members were likely to be people that already had established professional careers. A person's entire work history, education, and professional connection timeline could be easily viewed. In many ways, a LinkedIn profile is infinitely more useful to a recruiter than a standard resume.

LinkedIn management must have noticed this uptick trend in job inquiries early on and began offering both users and recruiters a few different ways to connect if desired. This seemed to be fine at the time because job recruiting was still secondary to the social networking component of the site.

It wasn't until the company went public that LinkedIn showed its true colors. Apparently, there is big money to be made in job recruitment portals, and LinkedIn gravitated toward it just like any profit-oriented organization would do.

I don't necessarily blame them for this move; I just wish I had seen the bigger picture before joining several years ago.

So now many of us are stuck in a job board and are finding it almost impossible to leave. LinkedIn members such as myself have spent years developing their professional network, and we're not willing to throw it all away. Instead, we'll just have to deal with the fact that networking with other professionals has become a secondary component to this job board called LinkedIn.