Can you look for a job on dating apps?

In China, where youth unemployment is particularly high and LinkedIn has not been available since last August, many young people have started using Tinder to find jobs – accessing it through a VPN since this specific dating app is banned by the government. To grasp the extent of this phenomenon, consider that a post giving advice on how to use Tinder for job hunting went viral on the Chinese social platform Xiaohongshu, suggesting, for example, matching with people working in the industry one is targeting. However, this trend is not limited to China. In the Western world, more and more people are using dating apps to seek employment, gather professional contacts, or, in a broader sense, for networking. This is not an entirely new concept for the industry. For instance, in 2017, Bumble launched the Bizz extension to cater to users primarily interested in the professional dimension rather than traditional dating. According to the Wall Street Journal, though, using dating apps for job hunting has become a much more common and socially accepted practice over the years, especially since the pandemic. Some freelancers, like musicians, use them to find potential collaborators. Others use them to attempt to raise funds for their startup. For instance, the Wall Street Journal reports the story of someone who launched a crowdfunding campaign on Hinge to start their own company, and over 50 people they met on the app made a donation.

Networking on Grindr

Even though many people don't appreciate discussing work-related matters in a space intended for meeting others, the majority of users who utilize dating apps for professional purposes focus on networking. More specifically, they aim to obtain information about a specific industry or role, but they do so through the informal date-like interactions these dating apps offer. «It's just a natural extension of the 'networking' tag that Grindr allows you to use as a search filter,» explained a user to Vice. This dynamic is not entirely new on social networks. For example, on LinkedIn, it is fairly common for users to reach out to employees of a particular company to inquire about job openings, solely with the aim of getting noticed. Unlike Tinder, which discourages and attempts to limit this practice, Grindr encourages its users to "network" within the app. Here, it is quite common to come across personal trainers advertising their services through their profiles.Business Insider reports that, according to a company spokesperson, around 25 percent of Grindr users use the app for networking. The CEO, George Arison, has confirmed to The Wall Street Journal that he has «hired or had professional relationships with several people he met on the app.» Over the years, Grindr has also posted job openings within its feed.On the other hand, if there is a social network designed for job seeking and increasingly resembles a dating app, that would be LinkedIn. According to a survey conducted in July, among a sample of a thousand women, 91 percent received inappropriate flirtatious messages on LinkedIn at least once, and 31 percent of these explicitly proposed a date. For this reason, the hashtag #keeplinkedinprofessional has become more and more popular.