LinkedIn and dating apps are failing users in the same ways

In October, 24-year-old Cait Camelia posted screenshots of her Hinge dating app bio on X. She chose cute, casual, and sexy photos of herself, par the course of a standout bio, but the prompts read, "The way to win me over is to get me a creative marketing job" and, "I want someone who can get me a creative marketing job." She included one corporate stock photo, a close-up of a handshake between two men in suits captioned, "This could be us." 

She's not looking for a partner — she's looking for a job.

The job market is dismal for many, with job growth as of January 2025 falling short of analysts' expectations. Despite unemployment being slightly down from the latter half of last year (four percent as of January 2025, down from 4.2 percent in September 2024), it's become the norm for people to apply for hundreds of jobs for months on end. And, it isn't unheard of for people to land a job or make life-changing money from going viral, which is what Camelia sought. 

"A lot of people thought that I expected to land a serious job from Hinge, but my intention was always to post it on social media," Camelia, a graphic designer who wants to work in a different field, said. "I figured that it would do well, and at the very least, get some visibility for my work." 

Fresh out of a relationship that started on Hinge, she's not ready to return to the app for dating, so she turned to it for more eyes on her skill set. (Hinge didn't respond to Mashable's request for comment.)

Camelia knew it would garner a substantial amount of negative attention from men, which would, in turn, push it further on the algorithm. (She experienced this when she shared her graduation photos in a dress and heels, and it went viral in 2021. An incel comedian had a lot to say about what she was wearing when she graduated early with two majors.)

Although she muted the X thread as soon as it gained traction, she read some of the comments. "I saw some people be like, 'Oh, you're wasting people's time being on this app,'" she said. "I think a lot of men waste a lot of women's time being on the app without intention. So, I don't feel guilty." 

One might think Camelia should try LinkedIn, a site meant for professional networking. Although Camelia found success searching for a job there in the past, particularly by finding the hiring manager or founder's profile on the platform and reaching out directly, she said she doesn't think the platform has innovated much since she graduated in 2021. "It's not a great thing, especially because the job field feels very competitive right now, and it's really hard to find jobs where it doesn't seem like they just throw your resumé into a stack of hundreds."

At their core, both LinkedIn and dating apps aim to connect people, but they seem to have fallen behind as how we do that evolves. 

Job searchers and daters run into the same challenges

A recent survey from MyPerfectResume found that 81 percent of recruiters admit to posting a fake or already-filled job online. Employers do this to maintain a presence and to keep tabs on available talent. 

Knowing this is the norm can be discouraging. "Even during the application process, I'm telling myself, 'This is pointless. You're wasting your time, and can better use your time to try to find work you actually want,'" Dylan*, a 29-year-old in Brooklyn who works in hospitality, said. 

Unfortunately, it's become commonplace to put yourself out there and receive no response. Fortune even reported that LinkedIn's "Open To Work" tag could hurt job seekers more than it helps because they look "overeager."

Some dating apps, like Hinge, Bumble, or Feeld, allow users to see who liked them before matching. There could be hundreds to sift through, and others have an infinite swipe. "My basic feeling is that the vast increase in the number of options we have in all parts of our lives — not just dating and job seeking — has actually changed the way we approach making choices," JD Giovanni, a 33-year-old who was laid off from his magazine job earlier last year, said. 

This can look like always looking for the next best thing or presenting what psychologist Barry Schwartz refers to as decision paralysis, where people make decisions based on what's easiest to evaluate rather than most important to them. 

First impressions undoubtedly carry a lot of weight, but crafting custom cover letters and first messages on a dating app can feel like a colossal waste of time. "If I post a role for something generic, like an account executive job, it could end up with 300 applications in a day," Braxton Brown III, a senior recruiter at Prove, said. It's just not possible to efficiently read all of them and respond at that rate. 

When job candidates do finally land an interview, and when daters connect with someone, both groups share a very common experience: ghosting. A small study from 2021 stated that 85 percent of dating app users have been ghosted. 

"In the age of LinkedIn, you can trace the companies you apply to and the people you speak with," Max Coyne, a 36-year-old in New York who's been on the job hunt since July, said. After being ghosted, he checked the company's job listing. "I found that the role I was interviewing for was moved from remote in Brooklyn to remote in Ohio for $30k less salary after they reposted the job the same week they dropped off." In another interview process, he saw the would-be supervisor got an internal promotion and presumably moved into it without reaching out. 

Seemingly, employers and daters do not know what they want. "Often, hiring managers have a really hard job defining what they actually need in the role," Brown said. "I think a lot of people on the dating side also have a really hard time defining what they want in a person or what they want in a relationship." He said both groups seem to conflate "nice to haves" with critical needs.  

"People get the 'ick' for something that should not at all be a deal breaker, and they might be missing out on someone that meets 98 percent of their other qualifications. That is such a parallel that I see in my job every day," he said. "If a hiring manager sees that this person didn't go to this school or that school, they might be totally uninterested." 

The viral call for men who are 6'5" with blue eyes, work in finance, and have a trust fund illustrates some people's superficial wants in dating, but Brown said employers tend to get caught up in details of a resumé that mean nothing to the role. They typically end up with an employee who can't fulfill the responsibilities of the job. 

Failing to match

Dating apps as a subscription service is a flawed business model. Users want to be on them temporarily until they find someone (or multiple partners). On its face, making users pay for "better" matches is the quick route to lose them, especially among younger demographics widely reporting dating app fatigue. But given that major dating apps are part of a public conglomerate, their incentive is to increase shareholder value.

LinkedIn's Premium claims to offer four times more profile views and 14 times more connections — it's quantity over quality. While those leveraging the platform for thought leadership and content creation may benefit from it, those looking for jobs are left to bleed $29.99 a month (or more) to blindly trust an algorithm to expose their profiles to more matches, especially given how long unemployment lasts for so many people. 

A LinkedIn spokesperson didn't address this in a statement to Mashable but said romantic advances and harassment of any form violate its rules.

Plus, artificial intelligence has picked up greatly in both spaces. On the dating front, people can use AI to create a bio, message someone first, and flirt back. Realistically, it could just be two AIs talking to each other at this point.  

And, you can barely escape it off the apps. Apple introduced Apple Intelligence to read emails and even summarize texts, both commonly used in dating. (Picture this: you'll be able to read incoming break-up texts more efficiently or those rejection letters that pop up in your Gmail seven months later.)

In the job market, employers are using AI to screen resumés and make hiring decisions. As you'd expect, job seekers are writing resumés and cover letters with ChatGPT. The rise of AI in both the job market and dating may dull the skill sets required for both, from establishing wants and needs and communicating to negotiating and discernment. 

It's clear the platforms are favoring shiny, new-ish innovation versus listening to their users and catering to their needs, but that would require looking at the larger sociological shifts rendering both the old ways irrelevant and their new plans inadequate. 

In this harsh job market, Camelia is leveraging every platform she can. That is why she took to X with her mock dating app bio job application. She ended up hearing from a couple of women who attempted the same. One is a graphic designer who filled her bio with her artwork and landed freelance work, as did Camelia. Although she has yet to get a full-time job, she's been commissioned for freelance work and leads from a bunch of startup CEOs and independent content creators. She's also in the interview process with a major record label weeks later, all according to the plan. 

* Name changed to preserve privacy.