Still too many people I am in contact with dismiss social networking as a passing craze for teenagers. Let me explain. An article in today's Sunday Times on Reid Harrison, founder of LinkedIn.com, prompted me to write this blog entry. He's expecting the reach of his website to double in the next 12 months from the current 32M, particularly fuelled by the global recession forcing people go to jobhunting when they did not expect to be. LinkedIn is a business networking site where you share elements of your CV in such a way that other people may contact you from seeing or searching on various key words. That may be an employer name, a job role or whatever. Headhunters have been using LinkedIn and other similar sites for some time now as an easy source of data, and I should know, I'm married to one!And it's certainly not for just jobhunting. Employees of companies big and small, and the huge band of self-employed people can also benefit by the networking opportunities the site brings. For example, you may think "I'd like to get in touch with someone from company X for such-and-such a project", and a quick search on LinkedIn will bring you back the answers. By using a three-level network (think of that as "three degrees of separation"), you have better access to people within three steps of you, ie
- people you know
- people known to those at level 1
- people known to those at level 2
Right now I have a little over 200 direct contacts (level 1) and nearly 4.5 MILLION, yes MILLION, across all three levels. Go on, sign up, and then link to me as the person who introduced you! New jobs, projects and opportunities could follow very soon.
