LinkedIn Has Become Performance Art

LinkedIn used to be a professional networking platform. 

Now? It feels more like performance art.

In this episode of Edan Haddock - Total Talent, Edan unpacks the strange evolution of LinkedIn and what it’s doing to Recruitment, Talent Acquisition and leadership culture. From recruiter influencers and AI-generated thought leadership to performative vulnerability, personal branding and the rise of “corporate creators”, this is a raw and honest look at the modern professional identity crisis.

Why does everyone suddenly sound the same online?
Has authenticity become monetised?
Are recruiters becoming media personalities?
And in a world flooded with polished AI content, what actually feels human anymore?

This episode explores the growing tension between visibility and authenticity, and why the future of Talent may belong to those who can build trust, not just audience.

A bold conversation about modern work, digital identity, recruitment culture and the strange theatre we all now perform online.

Join the Edan Haddock - Total Talent community (formerly Rubberband)

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:01

Welcome back to Eden Haddock Total Talent. I am your host, Eden Haddock, Head of Talent and People Experience at Movember. Today is a LinkedIn episode. LinkedIn has become performance art. LinkedIn doesn't feel like LinkedIn anymore. It feels like theatre. Not networking, not professional community, not career development. Performance. Carefully constructed, carefully edited, carefully lit. Everyone standing on stage trying to look like the smartest person in the room. Or the busiest or the most emotionally intelligent or the most resilient after a layoff or redundancy? Or the most visionary leader. I don't I don't even think most people realize they're doing it anymore. Because somewhere along the way, LinkedIn stopped being a professional platform and became a content platform. And when that happens, everything changes. Because content platforms reward, well, visibility, emotion, controversy, relatability, outrage, identity, performance. Not necessarily truth. And that changes recruitment. It changes leadership. It changes hiring. It changes personal branding. It changes credibility. It changes how companies recruit. It changes how recruiters behave. It changes how candidates present themselves. It changes how executives lead publicly. I think talent acquisition is sitting right in the middle of this transformation. Because recruiters were some of the first people forced to become creators. And for me, I don't think we've fully unpacked what that's done to the industry. So today I want to talk about why LinkedIn feels weird now. Why authenticity has become monetized? Why recruiters became influencers? Whether thought leadership is helping or hurting the profession. Why every company suddenly sounds the same online? Why vulnerability became branding? And why the future talent leader may need media skills more than recruitment skills. This is a big topic. It's potentially controversial and definitely uncomfortable in parts. But I do think it's one of the most important conversations happening in talent right now. There was a time when LinkedIn was basically a digital resume. You updated your title, connected with people, maybe posted occasionally. You shared a promotion, and you congratulated someone on a work anniversary. Done. It was kind of boring. But it was also honest. Then something shifted. The algorithm changed. And suddenly the people getting visibility weren't necessarily the best operators. They were the best performers. The best storytellers, the best headline writers, the best emotional narrators, and the best engagement hackers. And again, I'm not saying that's good or bad. I'm just saying it changed the platform fundamentally. Because now your success on LinkedIn isn't based on your capability alone. It's based on how visible you are, how memorable you are, how emotionally resonant your content is, how often you appear in feeds, I rarely do, whether people share you, or whether people feel something from your posts. And once that became the game, everything changed. Now recruiters aren't just recruiters, they're creators, media personalities, commentators, content strategists, community builders, and brand amplifiers. Which is fascinating. Because ten years ago, most recruiters didn't even want to be visible publicly. Now visibility is the strategy. And I've noticed something really interesting. Some recruiters now spend more time building a public identity. They spend more time doing that than actually recruiting. And before people get defensive, this isn't criticism. This is an observation. Because the market changed. The old school recruiter, we succeeded through database ownership, relationships, communication skills, market knowledge, hustle and negotiation. But the new school recruiter sometimes succeeds through audience. And that changes behavior. Now you start seeing motivational content. Five lessons leadership taught me. Crying selfies, emotional, emotional posts, airport reflection posts, quite commonly, fake vulnerability, staged authenticity, and performative empathy. And truly, some of it is real. That's the tricky bit. Not all of it is fake. But the platform itself, it rewards emotional performance. So eventually, and we're humans, people subconsciously learn what gets engagement. And then they start shaping themselves around it. That's where it gets dangerous. Because now there's a blurry line between authenticity and strategic authenticity. It's a huge difference. One is human, one is branding. And I do truly believe that LinkedIn has completely blurred those lines. This one's uncomfortable, but I'd like to talk about it. Somewhere over the last few years, corporate culture discovered vulnerability platforms. They do well online. And suddenly every redundancy post became poetic. Every burnout story became content. Every leadership reflection became deeply emotional. Every career setback became a personal brand asset. Again, some of these stories are real. But the platform incentivizes public emotional storytelling. And that changes human behavior. And eventually, you start seeing people perform emotion in ways designed for engagement. That's the weird bit. Not the emotion itself, the packaging of the emotion. Because now people instinctively think how will this play online? Even during deeply personal moments, that's new. And I think recruiters feel this pressure heavily because recruitment is emotional work. People lose jobs, people get rejected, people relocate families, people burn out, people have their identity tied to their work. And recruiters sit close to all of it. So naturally, recruiters become storytellers. But now we're entering a phase where grief becomes content, layoffs and redundancies become branding, and resilience becomes marketability. And I do think we need to be careful because there's a fine line between sharing experiences and commodifying them. Everyone sounds the same. This is one of my biggest frustrations with LinkedIn right now. Everyone sounds identical. It could be AI, I don't know. But it's the same cadence, the same formatting, the same fake humility, and the same storytelling structure. You know the posts. I was sitting in the airport. Yesterday taught me an important lesson. I didn't expect this to happen. Here are five things leadership taught me. I almost didn't post this. And the reason everyone sounds the same is because the algorithm has trained them. The platform rewards familiarity. And when people start to see a style perform well, they replicated it. As I said, AI has entered the chat. And now LinkedIn has become flooded with polished professional sameness. Everything sounds clean, safe, thoughtful, emotionally calibrated, consultant approved. And ironically, the more personal branding exploded, the less personality we got. That's the weird contradiction. And we have more content than ever, and less individuality than ever. That's why truly authentic voices stand out now. Not because they're louder, but because they feel human, messy, imperfect, specific, opinionated, unfiltered? It's why I do what I do. And it's part of why independent podcasts are growing. People are starving for conversations that don't feel manufactured. Now, moving on, has thought leadership become a performance KPI? Genuine question. And it's really interesting. Now in many organizations, visibility itself has become career currency, meaning posting regularly, speaking publicly, having followers, being known, building audience, it can directly can influence your career progression. But think about that. Ten years ago, our careers were mostly influenced internally. But now our external narrative matters too. And really that changes leadership behavior. Execs now build personal brands. TA leaders become influencers. Founders become creators. CEOs become LinkedIn personalities. Some companies even quietly encourage it. I would say some loudly encourage it. And why? Because audience equals reach. Reach equals employer brand. Employer brand equals talent attraction. Straightforward. So suddenly your online identity becomes business strategy. That's a massive cultural shift. And I think we're only in the early stages of it. Because future talent leaders, we will need audience literacy, media capability, storytelling skills, content strategy understanding, and community building ability as our core leadership skills, not our side hobbies, core capability. You know, that's wild. Here's the irony though. While LinkedIn became more performative, people simultaneously became better at detecting bullshit. Right? Candidates can smell fake culture instantly now. Employees can spot performative leadership immediately. The market itself got smarter. So now companies are trapped in this weird tension. They need visibility, but people distrust polished corporate messaging, which means authenticity becomes more valuable. But then authenticity itself becomes monetized. And suddenly authenticity becomes performance, too. It's a loop, a really weird loop. That's why hyper-polished employer branding often underperforms now. People want real leaders, real stories, real tension, honesty, transparency, imperfection. That's why the old corporate language is dying. Nobody believes, and nobody wants fast-paced, dynamic environment. Nobody wants we're a family. Nobody wants to read industry leading culture, right? Three really dumb examples, but you know what I mean. People want specifics now. What's the actual experience? How do people really feel there? What's broken? What's improving? What's hard? What's changing? The polished corporate mask, it simply doesn't work anymore. And LinkedIn accelerated that collapse. Now, recruiters have become media channels, and this fascinates me. Recruiters used to rely on job boards, agencies, databases, search firms. Going back to my early years. And now a recruiter with a strong LinkedIn presence can outperform entire recruitment functions. That's crazy when you think about it. Because trust shifted from institution to individual. Candidates increasingly follow people, the people, and not brands. That's huge. Some candidates trust creators, practitioners, niche experts, independent voices, more than they trust the corporate employer brand. And why? Because individuals feel more believable. This is part of why I think independent voices in TA are growing. People want perspectives from someone actually on the tools. Not just polished keynote slides, right? Not recycled frameworks, not future of work jargon. They want reality. And reality is messy. And of course, AI made everything worse. We have to talk about it. But AI has turbocharged performative LinkedIn. Now everyone can sound intelligent. Everyone can sound polished. Everyone can sound strategic. Everyone can sound emotionally articulate. Which means writing quality no longer signals expertise. That's important. Because for years, good writing implied intelligence, communication skill, strategic thinking. Now AI can generate all of that instantly. So audiences are adapting again. Now people search for originality, nuance, lived experience, real operational insight. Because generic leadership wisdom is everywhere now. An infinite supply. Which this means authenticity becomes even more premium. I think this creates a huge opportunity for practitioners. Because lived operational experience is harder to fake. That's why the future-winning voices may not be polished influencers. They may be practitioners with genuine perspective. So the big question is LinkedIn still good for the industry? It's the important part. Despite everything that I've said, I actually think LinkedIn has done enormous good too. Seriously. It created access. It gave recruiters visibility. It gave underrepresented voices platforms. It allowed people to build careers outside of the traditional gatekeepers. It created communities. It enabled learning at scale. It opened conversations around mental health, inclusion, burnout, and leadership. There's real value there, massive value. So the problem isn't the platform itself. It's understanding the incentives. Because every platform shapes behavior. And LinkedIn's incentives increasingly reward emotion, visibility, storytelling, consistency, and identity performance. So the challenge becomes: how do you be, you know, how do you how do you stay human inside a system that rewards performance? That's the real question. I think we're heading toward an interesting split. On one side, hyperpolished AI-generated corporate creator cont culture. You know, and then on the other side, you'll have smaller, messier, more human communities. I truly believe trust moves towards the second group. Because people are exhausted. We're exhausted by fake inspiration, endless growth hacks. Performative empathy, recycled thought leadership, and personal branding theater. All of us, I truly believe we want honesty again, not perfection. And that's why, you know, podcasts are exploding, which is a great thing. And private communities are growing, another great thing. And smaller creators are building loyal audiences. It's not all about the reach. Because intimacy is becoming valuable again, not scale. And maybe that's where talent goes to next. Less corporate theater and more human signal. So has LinkedIn become performance art? Yeah, I think it has. But maybe the more important question is can we still be authentic inside performance? Can recruiters still be real while building visibility? Can leaders still be human while managing personal brands? Can organizations still build trust while operating in algorithm-driven spaces? I I I don't know, but I do know this. The future talent leader probably won't just be operationally strong, commercially sharp, and strategically capable. They'll also need to understand audience, trust, communication, storytelling, digital identity, and community. Because visibility is no longer optional. Maybe that's the best thing we can do is to stop trying to sound perfect online and start sounding human again. Anyway, that's this week's episode of Eden Haddock Total Talent. I'm sorry I'm a day late, by the way. I had some technical glitches. So I've pulled out a bit of hair. But I came back. And if this one triggered you a bit, then that's really good. Probably means there was something real in it. That's what this episode's all about. I'll catch you next week.