There are no jobs on LinkedIn

I quit my previous job back in November 2025.

I’m not going to bore you with it: nasty circumstances combined with a toxic company and even more toxic management. I could either drag it out for a while until they eventually kicked me out or I could just quit; I chose the latter. I’m fortunate to be able to afford to make that kind of decision. We own the house (no mortgage), we’ve got some assets, some savings. Ages ago, I’d hesitate and I’d drag it out for as long as humanly possible, until I got another job offer. These days, I tend to just go “yeah, ok, here’s my resignation, fuck off”.

As such, I found myself joining the ranks of the unemployed. For most people, that generally means dealing with quite a bit of pressure. You’ve got bills to pay etc. For me, the worst aspect was “fuck, now I have to once again apply for imaginary jobs”.

One week into it, I had sent out about … 100 applications or so. It’s just an estimate, I haven’t bothered to count them. I’ll save you the trouble: I’ve not heard back from a single one of those “companies”. But that’s not what this post is about.

On the 8th day, however, a random recruiter from a random company – let’s call them Potatoes Ltd – contacted me (on a different website). He was interested in me for an opening they had yada yada yada. Long story short, 3 interviews later, I had the offer. Unfortunately, it was already December and they were pretty much getting ready for the holidays, so they decided to go with a January start date. Fine by me. Ages ago I would’ve been slightly upset – damn, one month with no income – but these days? Nah. These days it’s fine. Sure, I’ll just watch films and play some games for a month. I can handle that.

So I signed the contract and here I am, waiting.

During that week I wasted on LinkedIn, I’d wake up each morning and there’d be a couple of emails sent by “linkedin”. Blah blah company is recruiting someone with your skills, go here to apply, blahblah. So I would sit down at my computer and I’d start applying. I’d be sent to various webpages – usually some workday nonsense – half of which were fucking broken to begin with, rendering me unable to apply for the job. Not a problem, I just applied on the ones that did work.

A month had passed and the only result of applying for those ~100 jobs was that I started getting spam. Spam and scams. Random texts asking me to click this link and enter financial information, personal information etc. Note that this didn’t happen before.

I didn’t mind that too much. After all, I work in IT, I can spot a scam 1000 miles away. I just ignored them. Although I had unsubscribed (I wasn’t interested in the linkedin spam now that I had an offer), I kept receiving those emails. I found it a bit weird that I’d keep getting emails from linkedin regarding roles I had already applied for; I never heard back from those companies, not as much as a “sorry, but”; yet some of those “companies” are still apparently recruiting, looking for someone just like me. Those are roles I’d be “perfect” for – yet nobody ever contacted me. Weird, huh? What’s going on there?

Well, I figured out what’s going on there today. Because today I got another email from linkedin. It looks like Potatoes Ltd is looking to hire someone just like me. But, err, they … already found me and they already hired me. So I asked my contact at Potatoes Ltd. “What’s going on with that? Are you recruiting one more person?”. Guess what? No, they’re not. They haven’t even advertised the job on LinkedIn. There’s no reason to do that – it would cost them money. Why pay to advertise that you’re looking for – well, me – when you’ve already got…me? It would make no sense.

So no, they’re not hiring. No, they’ve not advertised the role on linkedin.

So what’s going on there? It’s difficult to say, but chances are linkedin is doing exactly what other “job portals” are doing. They’ve automated the fuck out of this thing. They probably have crawlers set up, looking for job ads on the web; when they find one, they insert that job ad on linkedin as well. No one contacted the company and the company didn’t contact them. But they can show people that they’ve “got” thousands of “jobs” available. Weee!

Except for, of course, those jobs don’t actually exist. The companies may have placed that ad on another website, 6 months ago. Linkedin just cut and pasted the job ad – bam, it’s now on linkedin. Have fun applying! Because you’re not going to hear back from anyone. If anything, some random HR lady is going to wonder who the fuck are all these people applying for a role that was “closed” 4 months ago. So of course she’s not going to reply. From where she’s standing, it might very well look like applicants are using some sort of failed automation tool that applies for roles that are no longer valid. Why would she call them back or email them, right?

So what’s going on is that you – the person looking for a job – are going to apply for hundreds of roles and you’re not going to hear back from anyone. Whoever’s at the other end may very well wonder what the fuck is wrong with you – why are you applying for a role that’s been closed months ago?

Ah, the effect this thing has on you, the toll it takes? LinkedIn (and the rest of them) don’t give a fuck. They got their clicks, they showed you a few ads, it’s all good. Ah, feeling demoralized, feeling down, questioning your worth? Not their fucking problem. Ah, you’re starting to question your own worth, your significant other is starting to wonder whether you’re really even trying to find a job etc, leading to a number of unpleasant conversations? That’s too bad, nobody cares.

But yeah, that’s all I wanted to say in this post. If you happened to go through this (or perhaps if you’re STILL going through this?), calm down. It’s not that something’s wrong with you or with your CV. It’s just that the jobs you’re applying for… don’t even exist. They MAY have existed half a year ago. In short, the maiden you’re courting is already married and she’s even got a SECOND child on the way. Of course she’s not replying. Meanwhile you sit there wondering whether you’re attractive enough, rich enough etc. Mate, nobody’s reading your letters.