Keeping in touch is generally good advice I know but my current situation is a little tricky. I replied on a different comment about this too so sorry for the text wall.

My big issue is that my entire employment history consists of 3 different periods of employment 2 of which are at my current employer. I started working at my current employer straight out of highschool and worked my way up over a good few years. Then I left for a different job for a couple years before a friend at current employer basically begged me to come back and work on a new project. I keep in touch with quite a few of my current coworkers and have since my first stint at this employer. But I don’t want to use them as references because layoffs are comming so if my current employer gets wind that I’m looking for a new job then odds are good they would just fire me immediately. Why would they keep paying me to sit at work with no work to do when they know I’m leaving anyways?

At my only other job I was basically a one man department working in a place where I interacted with very few people outside of a ticketing system. The very few people I regularly worked with there either never stuck around for more than a couple of months or I secretly despised them. My bosses were fine and I really should have kept in touch with them but I honestly wanted nothing to do with that place after I left.

As far as LinkedIn goes I’ve personally never had any employers that used it and only one coworker that used it. Maybe it’s more of a thing in bigger cities or different fields but it isn’t really a thing in my field in my area. I’m pretty invested in a trade now and it definetly doesn’t seem popular among trades workers.