I saw a Tiktok the other day that said that LinkedIn is on its way out and seems like it’s just Facebook for job searching. That made me feel good. Honestly, it’s not that I don’t like LinkedIn. I’ve never used it so I can’t make an educated argument for the usefulness of the platform. I’ve really only ever used it when attempting to cyberstalk someone. However, LinkedIn, to me, represents adulting. Not just paying your taxes, cooking something other than pasta type of adulting, but real adulting like networking and having a big girl job.
I basically spent my entire childhood just wanting to grow up. I wanted to do big girl things, which to me were going places by myself, making my own money and hanging out with my friends whenever I wanted. Even now, those things sound great but there’s a caveat. I feel like I’m going to graduate in two years into a job market that I have no idea how to navigate and whenever I think about it, it sends me into a bit of a tailspin. I’m not spending all of my free time angsting about it, but it pops into my head often enough that it’s become a very real fear. I hate uncertainty. It’s totally a character flaw, but I feel like I need to know what’s going to happen, when it’s going to happen, what will happen after, etc. Now, with COVID, knowing what the future holds seems even more impossible.
So, on to LinkedIn. As I said, I’ve never used it, but it seems like everyone else does. I read somewhere that the majority of open positions aren’t listed on websites like Indeed, but are only really available if you know someone or know someone that knows someone. First of all, that’s stupid. Second, that’s probably not helping my point about LinkedIn, but you should have realized by now that LinkedIn is just my mascot for adulting. Third, that makes me really nervous because why can’t companies just put on their websites when they’re hiring? Maybe they do and I just need to learn more about this.
As to why I don’t want to use LinkedIn, I have a couple of reasons. I don’t want to have to think about my future. I don’t want to think about how hard it’s going to be to find a job. I don’t want to think about the possibility of being supremely unhappy with my life when I graduate. Creating a LinkedIn profile won’t force me to dwell on these things but that fact is irrelevant. It just makes everything seem so final, like once I put my major on LinkedIn I can’t change it. This also, obviously, is not true. The problem is really just that I’m not ready to do everything by myself yet.
I feel like I’m not doing enough. Am I taking enough credits? Do I pick my major based on whether I can get a job or not or on how much I like it? Should I be doing research? What if I don’t want to do research? Should I be in more clubs? Why do I have to go through three rounds of interviews just to be in a club? You get the gist. Even as a sophomore, it’s really easy to feel like you won’t be prepared for life after college, and in all honesty, I probably won’t be. I think that’s okay though.
I know that this article probably didn’t solve anything for you, and was at least a little misleading since it wasn’t really about LinkedIn, but maybe you felt like you could relate and maybe knowing you weren’t the only one flipping out makes you feel better.