This past week, a new trend took off on TikTok, mostly among young women in marketing, set to Chaka Khan’s I’m Every Woman. In the videos, users post short clips of themselves with overlaid text saying “Let’s connect on LinkedIn,” often including their names and specialties, sometimes inviting others to share theirs too. It’s a quick, breezy prompt, but it says a lot about where LinkedIn is headed and how people are feeling about work right now.
This trend, and others like it, seem to reflect two things at once: the lack of control many people, especially those in marketing, feel over the hiring process—leading them to try and game the system by any means necessary; and the way LinkedIn itself is increasingly rewarding vanity metrics over meaningful connection, authentic engagement, or even useful content. Professionalism has always involved a level of performance — but lately, that performance feels louder, more visual, more constant. It’s less about boundaries and more about visibility. LinkedIn, once a platform for milestones and job listings, has leaned further into algorithmic engagement, rewarding whatever keeps people on screen, whether or not it provides value.
LinkedIn currently has over 1.2 billion users, and nearly half of them — 47% — are between the ages of 25 and 34. That’s followed by users 18 to 24, making it clear the platform isn’t just for executives or job switchers anymore. While LinkedIn was founded in 2003 and originally catered to small businesses and industry groups (including partnerships with brands like American Express), its real shift began in 2006 when public profiles were introduced. Since then, it’s grown into a hub for professionals and B2B marketing. And while the platform has always been about performance, its recent TikTokification feels especially noticeable.
In 2020, LinkedIn introduced Stories, four years after Instagram cannibalized the feature from Snapchat. But LinkedIn users didn’t seem interested in 24-hour disappearing updates, and the platform retired the feature in 2021. Since then, it’s focused heavily on video. In February 2025, the company announced updates to make video posts more prominent in-stream, improve discoverability, and added a video tab in the app for some users. This came after a 36% increase in watch time year over year. And honestly, if you’ve ever spent time on the LinkedInLunatics subreddit, none of this is shocking — the platform has always had a professional problem. It’s just more obvious now.
As video became more visible, the type of content that performed well changed too. Creators have had to adjust. These days, I regularly see videos of people vlogging their work trips (complete with skincare routines), doing sponsored posts for B2B brands, or partnering with vitamin companies for a “healthy start to the day.” Others are showing off their design skills by posting their sister’s baby shower signage. For LinkedIn, this is a win. The platform has long had a creator problem, with some reports suggesting only 1% of users post regularly. Anything that drives engagement is progress….I guess.
And LinkedIn knows exactly what it’s working with. The platform has a user base with high purchasing power. Nearly 53% of users are classified as high income, earning over $100K. That’s a dream demographic for advertisers. Until recently, B2C brands hadn’t paid much attention to LinkedIn. But with Meta’s volatility, X’s collapse, and growing pressure on ad performance, the platform is becoming a prime frontier for consumer-facing brands looking to diversify.
But let’s be honest. Educational content doesn’t keep you on-screen like entertainment does. And the more LinkedIn mimics TikTok, the more the algorithm rewards what’s flashy, emotionally charged, or just plain engaging, whether or not it’s useful. Creators are left unsure of what “success” even looks like. Are they supposed to inform? Entertain? Promote? The platform doesn’t exactly say. And in that uncertainty, trends like the “let’s connect” video start to make sense. At a time when the job market feels increasingly unstable, visibility becomes a kind of strategy. Maybe it’s not about genuine connection — maybe it’s just about being seen.
And I say that from experience. When I first started my career, I was embarrassed to have zero connections. That 500+ badge felt like proof of legitimacy — a signal that I was competent, that I belonged. I placed a lot of value on that number, hoping it would say something about my worth before I had the chance to. Over time, my perspective changed as I grew more confident in my work and clearer about what actually matters. But I still understand where the urge to post and perform comes from — especially early on, when the job market feels punishing and opaque. Any kind of visibility feels like a win. A way to feel like you’re doing something in a system where so much feels out of your control. I get it. And I can’t fault anyone for trying.
Because the truth is, the job market right now is bleak. White collar work is no longer the stable path it was sold to be. In March 2025 alone, the U.S. recorded the third-highest number of layoffs in history. The only higher totals were in April and May 2020, when the economy shut down during the pandemic. In 2023, the tech sector alone lost over 240,000 jobs. Marketing, HR, DEI, and product teams were hit especially hard. A recent Chief Marketer Pulse survey found that 27% of marketing departments had been affected. That’s not just cuts — it’s a generation of early-career workers entering an industry with fewer jobs, less mentorship, and more competition.
And when everything feels out of your control, metrics start to feel like something you can manage. You can’t create budget. You can’t speed up hiring. But you can post. You can grow a following. You can build a digital presence that makes you feel like you’re doing something. In a system that offers little stability, it makes sense that people start looking for quick wins.
All of this brings us back to professionalism — or at least what we thought it was. Marketing has always had a looser relationship to it. Lately, I’ve worked more closely with product and engineering, and the contrast is real. Marketing rewards polish, personality, aesthetic, and sometimes even oversharing. Social media has scrambled whatever expectations were left. I don’t think the pandemic caused that shift, but it definitely accelerated it. Gen Z, and to some extent younger millennials, don’t compartmentalize work and life the way older generations did. There’s a growing push to show up more authentically at work. And while I think it’s complicated and nuanced, with some people overdoing it at the risk of creating a boundariless professional life, I also think there’s some merit to authenticity. People evolve. Platforms evolve. And maybe the way we show up professionally has to evolve too.
There’s something disorienting about a platform that once stood for professionalism now functioning more like a stage. But maybe that’s always been true — and we’re just seeing it more clearly now. The job market is broken. Social platforms are optimized for spectacle. And people are adapting to survive both. I don’t think this trend is revolutionary. But I do think it’s revealing — about what we value, what we’re rewarded for, and how much harder it’s getting to tell the difference.
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