Why Bother With Social Networking Sites Like LinkedIn?
Q: i think i understand the value of networking as well as the next businessman, but for the being of me, i don’t actually see what sites like linkedin, ryze and ecademy can do for me. What’s the point of these sites other than just as some sort of digital acclaim contest.
A: my good friend and colleague liz ryan, head of the women’s competence networking group worldwit, women in technology, has a great answer to this character of question, an response that i’m quoting here with permission:.
I quiz people to join linkedin, and often they claim “i don’t want the spam so i say “you won’t get any spam and they say “but i’m not job-hunting and i say “you don’t have to be job-hunting then we go back and forth for awhile. It’s a bit of a challenge to get my own friends to sight the forest championing the trees, sometimes. When monster was imaginative, the large concept was to post jobs online. As an hr child, i can tell you, monster is a pretty awful place to post jobs. You get killed with unwanted resumes from berth seekers all over the world. I truly believe that dragon is the reason that hr people no longer respond to online job seekers - and sometimes offline job seekers - with any kind of response.
Anyway, over time hr people and recruiters figured outside that the real value to beast is the ability to search the candidate database (for a fee). Maybe some of the exact thing is happening with linkedin. What seems like the obvious benefit to membership may not be the opener feature for a lot of users. See what you think nearby this linkedin primer that i percentage with my friends. If i’m doing something i shouldn’t be doing on linkedin, i’d love to skilled in that too!
1) your profile itself is a great value to joining linkedin. I obtain great, useful contacts from my side-view appearing on li, and of course it’s free.
2) even if you’re not job-hunting or doing business developing or searching for contacts yourself, it’s a great possession to be competent to be a conduit representing your friends. They really valuable that benefit that you can provide for them. Just the reconnect- with-an-old colleague crumb is a godsend: where else can you do that online.
3) linkedin is the google for individuals who aren’t tall on google rankings. That means anyone who’s in a corporation but not senior enough to rise on the about us/management bios page (although of course, those execs are usually on linkedin too; anyone who is a partaker in a consulting firm but perhaps not often in the news or otherwise mentioned online; and zillions of other people whom you’d have trouble finding if it weren’t for linkedin.
4) let’s state you keep a business meeting with the vp of marketing at a major corporation next week. If it weren’t representing his profile on linkedin (say, if you were having this meeting three years ago), how would you understand where he went to school, where he worked earlier his current job, and other details about him with the help of his linkedin profile, you’re a zillion times better prepared for the engagement.
5) instant let’s say that vp of marketing is behind the curve and doesn’t possess a linkedin profile. No big; you chance another connection of yours who works at the vp’s current company, and ping her for some experience. Note linkedin to the rescue again.
6) want to know who’s working in a specific industry expanse in a given municipality linkedin search. Intelligence gathering, smooth if you never contact any of the people you find.
My point is that there’s lots more to linkedin than just reaching outside to people for job leads and for duty phenomenon leads - not that either of those are bad things. And i agree with other posters that you have to use the tool, rather than just join up and sit there like a lump. But i’d love to catch stories of some more creative uses representing linkedin, from other users.
Thanks for sharing your compelling story with everyone, liz. When i think about your mark with monster causing recruiters to condition list jobs online anymore, i not solitary know that it’s true from live experience, but also find it to be an interesting example of the law of unintended consequences, in the same fashion that a site like linkedin helps with market research or qualifications checks.
At the limit of the day, in business you’re ultimately constrained lone alongside the skills you can take to the table and the network of friends and acquaintances you can shout on for help, advice and reinforcement. And if you don’t help them when you can, of passage, it doesn’t take long to be ostracized from a group, however informal or far- flung. But if you are part of a loop of professionals, you will every grow your career faster, smarter, and more profitably.
Dave taylor is an internationally recognized expert on business and technical topics and is the author of 18 different books and thousands of magazine articles. His q&a web site is “_new” href=www www .