Devan Barker has never spent so long job-hunting.
The 31-year-old from West Hollywood is looking for serving and bartending gigs. After a bad electric scooter accident, Barker spent months out of work. Meanwhile, hiring for hospitality jobs has dropped off. Now he spends his days looking for openings on job boards like Indeed, Culinary Agents — and Grindr.
Growing up in Georgia, dating apps like Grindr were the “gay newspaper,” Barker said. Why not look for a job there? He’s had some wins. One connection got him an interview, but the manager later decided to explore promoting in-house for the position. Other bartenders and waiters on the app have asked on Barker’s behalf if their bosses are hiring.
“I’ve noticed that I’ve had more success on these apps,” he said. “There’s no room for embarrassment.”
Barker isn’t alone. In a recent Glassdoor community pool, 29% of respondents said that they were using or considered using dating apps for career purposes. In a rough job market filled with AI résumé scanners (and AI-written résumés), many applicants are desperate to make their case to a real person.
Networking through dating apps isn’t new. Business Insider spoke to professionals who found clients, referrals, or simply got their foot in the door — many of whom told stories that dated back years.
So, have Tinder and other dating apps quietly become the new LinkedIn? These workers think so.
Blending mutual attraction and opportunity
Lexie Flynn, a 27-year-old social media manager from Philadelphia, met a client on Hinge. She was looking for side gigs. He was tired of the language barrier between him and his social media operator in Indonesia.
There was romantic interest “on both ends,” Flynn said, but the conversation quickly veered into work. It stayed professional “once we realized we could help each other out” in business, she said.
She audited his social media for free and sent him a review via Instagram DM. He met with his marketing manager, then all three of them connected, and she got the gig. She’s run his social media since October.
“When I do see ‘business owner,’ that’s the first place my mind goes to,” Flynn said. “I’m 100% stalking their business on social media.”
There’s a stickiness to mixing romance and the workplace. At what point does a Bumble match move from bound for the bedroom to the office?
Barker is direct with his Grindr connections. When someone asks, “How are you?” he responds, “Job-hunting.”
Is working alongside a match a bad idea? It depends.
Sean Horan, a professor of communications at Fairfield University who focuses on workplace relationships, said that romantic connections can be shorter-lived — and thus less messy for an employer — than other types of relationships.
“Someone working with a sibling or a best friend could be a relationship that’s stronger, that’s closer and has more loyalty than any romance would,” Horan said.
Dating app users may refer their matches to entirely separate parts of large organizations, ensuring little to no face time. But there’s no guarantee — and there’s always the chance things could get awkward down the line. It’s also possible they wouldn’t be on the same team or in the same office.
Vigna Grace, a 26-year-old product manager from London, would ask her Tinder dates about their jobs. This was back when she was 21, single, and unsure of what path she wanted to take after graduating with a computer science degree.
She said the dates gave her an “inside look” at different companies she could work at. Grace went on dates with employees at tech companies like Google and Meta, as well as with investment bankers and venture capitalists, she said. Some referred her for jobs, like a match at Spotify.
How does Grace draw the line between a romantic and professional connection?
“I don’t,” she responded.
Grace said that she wants to be with someone who loves their job, so work is a natural talking point on a date. She’s curious, not digging for professional connections but treating them as a “nice side effect.”
She’s not worried about running into a Tinder match in the office, either.
“I’ve always liked to work from home,” she said.
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