LinkedIn Jobs for Follower Farming

How some brands use LinkedIn jobs quietly to farm followers for their company page using high-intent candidates and dark-pattern-adjacent design.

LinkedIn jobs used to exist for one reason.

To hire the right folks.

Or at least that’s what I believed.

Until I started noticing a pattern that had nothing to do with hiring. And everything to do with increasing the company page followers.

Nothing illegal. Maybe even low-key smart.

But it sits uncomfortably close to a dark pattern that quietly exploits user intent.

Let me break it down for you.

When you apply for a role, the final step (review) asks you to “Follow the company for updates.”

The box is checked by default.

Another follower added, hopefully?

From LinkedIn’s perspective, that’s one way to bump a brand’s social authority. And its placement works for quite a few reasons:

• The benefit feels asymmetric (“maybe, following helps my chances”).

• The candidate is already in a high-intent, emotionally charged state.

• The action (FOLLOW) required is frictionless (one click).

The outcome is predictable.

The application gets submitted, and the page followed.

Now, you wait for them to view your application and any subsequent response.

But what if there was never going to be a response, or even a look at your application?

That’s the problem.

Some brands use LinkedIn jobs to inflate their follower count, while not even hiring. Yes, they do that.

How do I know this?

Being on the lookout for relevant roles, I’ve noticed a few brands posting/reposting the same roles since ages without closing anyone.

One might argue that they couldn’t find the right person. Fair.

But what if they never reviewed any application in the first place?

Potentially 1126 new followers

Here’s the pattern:

• 100+ applications

• No visible review activity

• No role closure

• Minimal page content

• Yet a steadily growing follower count

Sounds sus now?

There’ll always be folks who misuse a tactic, but there have to be countermeasures, which are missing here.

Right now, LinkedIn doesn’t tell:

• If a role results in a hire?

• How many times was this role reposted?

• What % of earlier job posts converted to real hires?

That’s an opportunity missed, if you ask me.

Now imagine if LinkedIn showed results for each job post, like

• Hiring status: Filled/Closed

• Time-to-hire

• Source-of-hire: LinkedIn/Referral/Other

• Jobs-to-hire ratio

• Average repost count per role

• Hiring conversion rate from LinkedIn applicants

• Glassdoor-like review/rating for companies

This would add trust and improve accountability with candidates.

And sure, it would improve the hiring experience.

As for the brands, hiring is a great opportunity to boost brand value.

And the best way they can do that is by publicly closing the loop.

That means

• Publish hiring insights

• Sharing role retrospectives

• Post “why we did & didn’t hire” learnings

• Hiring BTS, etc.

It’ll only build transparency and, with that, a chance to gain better followers, improve the employer brand (big time), and build long-term trust.

Win-win-win for everyone.