Why I Wouldn't Trust LinkedIn. Here's What I Did Instead.

Fewer than 1 in 1,000 LinkedIn applications leads to a hire. That is not my opinion. That comes from LinkedIn's own published data.

In this episode I break down what the platform has actually become: the application math (11,000 applications per minute, 6 to 8 hires), the ghost jobs (up to 1.7 million fake listings, reported by the BBC), and the fake recruiter warning issued by five countries' intelligence agencies in June 2026.

Then the part that matters: the two doors in front of you. Keep looking but change the toolkit, or step out of the system and build your own. Both are valid. Both take courage. The only wrong answer is another year of feeding the machine.

Sources cited: LinkedIn published hiring data, Resume Genius analysis of US government data, BBC Worklife, Five Eyes joint bulletin "Safeguarding Our Secrets" (June 2026), Kauffman Foundation.

This episode is also available as a video on YouTube with on-screen graphics, stat cards, and visual breakdowns. Search "Why I Wouldn't Trust LinkedIn" on the Empower Over 50 channel, or visit: https://www.youtube.com/@EmpowerOver50

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Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:00

This is EO50 Investigates and I'm Max Farman. Today I'm breaking down LinkedIn's own hiring numbers, and what I found maybe check them three times. Fewer than one job application in a thousand on LinkedIn leads to a hire. One job application to a thousand. That is not a critic's guess or my guess. That comes from LinkedIn's own publishing hiring data. Roughly 11,000 applications go into the platform every single minute. And in that in that same minute, six to eight people get hired. So if you are over 50 sitting at your I don't know, kitchen table tonight, about to send application number 200 into that machine, I need you to hear me clearly. You're not failing. Today I'm gonna show you what LinkedIn has actually become. Real numbers, named sources. And then I will show you what to do instead. If we have not met before, I'm Max, and I lost my corporate job at 56 and built my own path instead. On this channel we deal with work, money and reinvention after 50, but anybody really is welcome. We talk honestly about things with no sugar coating, so let's get into it. First, let's let's start with with that number. 11,000 applications a minute. I mean that's that's just incredible. So that's maybe six to eight hires a minute. This is LinkedIn's own data. Now, the question is really, is is that is that the whole story? And I'm afraid to say the answer actually is uh no. Plenty of hiring still happens through people, referrals, connections that we all have on LinkedIn. But that ratio tells you exactly what your odds look like inside that machine we call LinkedIn. And it tells you why the standard advice apply more, apply faster, click easy, apply on everything is mathematically dead. More volume into a funnel like that does not change your odds. It just burns your evenings, it kills your time, kills your motivation. And if you've been looking for a job recently, then you know how bad it is out there without these kind of numbers against you. But then you see now it gets worse. Resume genius, who are a career research firm, analyzed using government hiring data. They're finding roughly 30% of job postings never result in a hire at all for anyone. Not they picked someone younger, and we talk about ageism a lot on this channel, but nobody actually got the job because in in many cases there was never a job. We've talked about it before on the channel, and these are called ghost jobs. Companies pose them to look like they are growing, it helps their bottom line, it improves it impresses the stockholders. Yeah? But they also want to collect a bank of resumes for later too. Sometimes it's maybe to keep their own staff nervous. I would hope not, but it happens. And the BBC reported the same analysis, found as many as 1.7 million of these ghost listings on LinkedIn in the US alone. But here's why this matters so much for us. When you are over 50 and you hear nothing back, you know what you do. You blame yourself. You blame your age, maybe, too many grey hairs. So what do you do? You rewrite the resume again. I'm sure many of you have been there. And sometimes the truth is simpler and honestly uglier. There was no job. There was never gonna be a phone call. To put it simply, you weren't you weren't rejected. You basically you were harvested, they were gathering information from you. And if you thought it couldn't get any worse, well, it can, because there is a third problem, and this one is new. In June, the intelligence agencies of five countries, the United States, the UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand, published a joint warning called Safeguarding Our Secrets. Their finding foreign intelligence services are running fake recruiters on LinkedIn. And and to look at them, you you wouldn't know. Their profiles are polished, they sound like real firms, real real real companies, and flattering messages maybe to you about your experience. And there was one single fake job advert that poured in more than 400 resumes. Most of them from people with government and military backgrounds go figure. But think about who the ideal target is. Now let me think for a second. Do they want a 20-year-old with a very short, shallow resume? Or maybe someone with a longer career, longer resume, more details, better contacts maybe, more contacts, deeper contacts. Decades of inside knowledge. You kind of see where I'm going here with this? They're not looking for a recent grad or anything like that. They want you and me. The older people with bigger contacts, like I mentioned, more contacts I should say, like I mentioned. Maybe more information from a company that you worked for. Hence the military and government. So here is a plain rule. A real recruiter will survive being checked. Look the person up outside LinkedIn, even call the company, the main line, and ask if the job exists. But never send your date of birth, your address, history, or any document until you have verified the human. And and honestly, if if checking them kills the conversation, then it was a trap. It was a setup. So what do we do with all of this? Delete the profile and shout to the sky or scream, go crazy? No, no, there's no need to do to do that. LinkedIn is a directory. Use it like a directory. That's how it was when LinkedIn first started. It was meant to be a way for you to be able to connect with other people. So use it that way. Look people up, be findable, and stop treating it like a lottery ticket. Because, and here's the real point of this video. Once you accept that the machine was not built for you, you stop asking, what is wrong with me? And start asking a much better question. What do I actually do with the next 10 years? And that question has two honest answers. Two doors. And both of them are real. And the best thing about it, they're both yours. Now, door one. If you want a job or need one, I am not going to torque you out of it. Wanting a paycheck is not a failure of imagination. But the way you look for it has to change. Because we just did the math on the old way. Now, there are three moves. Move one. Stop just applying to everything. We're all guilty of it. We get, I don't want to say desperate, but we get to a point where nothing ventured, nothing gained, right? Stop it. Five applications a week. Researched, verified, aimed, beat fifty fired into the void. Move two. Verify before you invest. Before you go and give a posting your evening, check the company's own careers page. Most companies advertise the jobs on their website. Find a person's name if you can that's attached to the company and to the role that they're looking to serve or hire. If you can't verify it, don't waste your time. Move on. Now, move three, upgrade the toolkit. The portals gave employees power tools and gave you a search box. That gap is closing. There are better ways about looking for a job. You just got to be more precise about what you're looking for. But you need to verify it, as I mentioned before. And I'll be straight with you here. This is exactly the problem I have been working on for the last few months. There'll be an announcement in Thursday's video. So make sure if you haven't already to subscribe to the channel and hit the bell to get notified for when that video comes out. Now the second door. And I can talk to that from experience. But honestly, when I lost my job last year, just the thought of resumes and interviews, or maybe no interviews, and the desperation and the feeling of rejection, not for me. The only wrong answer is another year of feeding the machine and blaming yourself for the results. If you are job hunting, take one application you're about to fire into the void and spend that hour on yourself instead. And if some part of you has been circling around reinvention, write down the one thing you would build if nobody could ghost you. You are not a number in someone else's funnel. So stop acting like one. Now, if this was useful, consider subscribing because we are back to two videos a week from now on. Until then. Cheers.