- LinkedIn announced it was shutting down its Chinese job-seeking service in May.
- This comes at a time of high rates of youth unemployment in the country.
- Chinese professionals are using a dating app in their search for work instead, Sixth Tone reports.
Young professionals have found a novel way to advertise their willingness to work, using their Tinder profiles to network and kick-start their careers after LinkedIn was pulled from the country, Chinese news publication Sixth Tone reported.
On May 8, LinkedIn CEO Ryan Roslansky shared a blog post to employees, announcing job cuts and plans to phase out their local professional networking service named InCareer in China by August 9, citing "shifts in customer behavior and slower revenue growth."
This couldn't have come at a trickier time for many graduates and young professionals, as, according to the National Bureau of Statistics, China's youth unemployment rate hit an all-time high of 21.3% in June.
One Peking University graduate told Sixth Tone the dating app Tinder had been professionally helpful, as her date gave her tips on how to secure an internship at a firm he worked for. Others told the outlet they have specifically used the app to track down job opportunities.
A 22-year-old fashion graduate from Beijing told the publication she had applied to more than 30 positions in the conventional way, using email and job sites to no avail, before swapping her Tinder selfies with messages in large red characters that read, "Is anyone short of workers? I'm currently looking for a job. Hire me."
It's unclear if her attempts gained her any opportunities, but others are promoting the potential of the idea, including a user on the Chinese social platform Xiaohongshu, who posted a set of tips on how to find a job on Tinder in June.
In the post, the user gave six pieces of advice, including suggestions that users should only match with men from the specific industry they're interested in, start conversations asking about their match's job, and gradually share their struggles before asking for their match's advice. At the end of the post, the user wrote that they had used these tips to get a match to help edit their résumé and gain recommendations to employers, Sixth Tone reported.
A spokesperson from Tinder told Sixth Tone that this behavior could violate their platform community guidelines.
"Our guidelines reinforce our policy that users should use Tinder to make personal connections, not business ones," a spokesperson told the outlet. "Tinder is not a place to promote businesses to try and make money. Similarly, users also shouldn't advertise, promote, or share social handles or links to gain followers, sell things, fundraise, or campaign."
This isn't the first time users have taken advantage of a social media app to increase their chances of securing work.
The hashtag #careertok has over 1.7 billion views on TikTok and features videos from creators sharing tips on interview techniques and networking. In response to its popularity, the app launched the pilot program TikTok Resumes in 2021, partnering up with a number of companies, and encouraged users to showcase their skills and experience in the form of a TikTok.
For more stories like this, check out coverage from Insider's Digital Culture team here.
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