There’s a ton of recruiters on LinkedIn looking for new ways to make their next commission. Usually, that means looking for potential high earners to add to their roster of candidates. For a lot of people, that’s a good reason to at least keep their profiles up to date—even if their true opinion of LinkedIn is pretty much the same as one user quoted in The Guardian: “It’s like a giant, living, breathing resume, complete with bad formatting, plasticized optimism and synthetic relationships.”

 

But there’s a catch to succeeding on LinkedIn: the people that benefit from it fall into a certain demographic. Most of LinkedIn’s users are college educated, over 35, and make over $50,000 a year. Recruiters on the app are targeting workers with education and experience, many of whom are already happily employed at well-paying jobs.

 

If you’re an Amazon delivery driver or a call center rep, you’re less likely to have a LinkedIn account. Even if you do, you’re not as likely to benefit from the network—because it’s focused on experience, skills, and networks that people with these jobs haven’t had the opportunity to accumulate yet.

 

And unlike most social media, it’s pretty void of personality. Unless someone posts a video to their profile (which is pretty rare), it’s not really a place people go to understand what someone is like to be around. Usually future employers save that part for the interview, which is a problem of its own.

 

Recruiters looking for higher earners are also more likely to pass over the profiles of hourly service workers, meaning they won’t get a leg up into the corporate world through the app. It’s the people that are already there that benefit.