> who would you rather hire: someone who wow'd in an interview or someone with LinkedIn flair?

Who would you rather interview: someone who has a great resume, and a strong LinkedIn profile, and connections to a strong peer community who can endorse them, or a faceless rando that shows up in your inbox with a PDF, amongst thousands of others, with zero referrals?

I'm not endorsing LI grind -- I too hate it, but ignore at your own peril. OP seems to be in a rather precarious situation, so maybe it would help being a bit less dogmatic.

LinkedIn referrals mean jack shit.

As I said:

> anything past where you've worked on LinkedIn is a waste of time

Because everything on LinkedIn literally exists to be farmed. And why wouldn't it? LinkedIn's customers are recruiters. Users are the currency.

OP would be better served by actually networking with their peers. Not in app-mediated (and -monetized) ways, but in normal social human ways.

Sometimes it's like people forgot how to say "Hey, want to grab a coffee and catch up? What's been going on with you?"

> LinkedIn's customers are recruiters.

Exactly this. And recruiters are the ones finding candidates and scheduling interviews.

You may not like it. I certainly don't. But that's the world we live in.

> "Hey, want to grab a coffee and catch up?"

This and the comment above are not at odds. If you're looking for a job like OP, at minimum you should do both.

> who would you rather hire: someone who wow'd in an interview or someone with LinkedIn flair?

Wrong question. This is not about the hiring stage.

Who would I rather move on to a phone screen: someone with an empty or nonexistent linkedin profile, or someone with a profile which matches their resume and has many connections to other people who worked at the same companies?

While I hate to have to say it is the latter, that's where we are today with AI-generated fake resumes.

I have 344 resumes left to review tonight. Those that don't match their linkedin profile history have no chance (unless they are a direct colleague referral).

Hence

> anything past where you've worked on LinkedIn is a waste of time

They just told you they also look for coworker connections though

I am unable to parse this sentence.

If English isn't your native language, then an expansion/simplification would be:

Putting your work history in LinkedIn is the maximum amount of effort you should make. Any additional effort, beyond that, is a waste of your time.

<3 I thought I was alone in this