In a Fortune article published in March, a representative of management consulting firm Accenture revealed that he expects up to 20,000 of Accenture’s new hires this year to come from social media.
20,000.
And knowing the social media landscape, when it comes to professionals using social media, you know that this doesn’t mean hiring through Facebook. The vast majority of those will come through LinkedIn, since that’s by far the most popular
While I created an outpost on LinkedIn years ago, I haven’t looked at it since. In light of this news, I returned to the site, and made some interesting discoveries:
- Most of the people I’ve ever worked with are now on LinkedIn.
- When a contact updates her profile, I’m notified, which gives me the opportunity to talk with her about the change. This is a
nigh-perfect conversation starter; who wouldn’t want a message of congratulations or sympathy when their professional life changes? - I know a number of people who weren’t on LinkedIn, and I invited to join. Quite a few of them joined; more than I expected. People seem to increasingly realize LinkedIn’s utility.
- I’ve already been able to connect a contact looking for work with someone else interested. This is only a few weeks in.
- People actually discuss topics, maturely and reasonably.
- There are groups for about every conceivable topic.
- Groups are plagued by spam. I don’t know why, but for every group I’ve joined, at least half of the discussion topics are individuals advertising their services (“Guaranteed marketing success for your business!”). They don’t appear to be scams, exactly; instead, they’re mildly related advertisements. I’m surprised that group moderators don’t control this.
Overall, I’m glad I’m back.