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Workers go online for career networks

Roger Akers hasn’t stopped handing out his business cards.

But the Sacramento, Calif., venture capitalist has found another tool for expanding his network of contacts — and this one’s online.

Akers is one of more than 6 million worldwide who are members of LinkedIn.com, a networking site often described as the MySpace of the business world.
And while its membership is just a fraction of such popular social networking sites as MySpace and Facebook, analysts say Palo Alto, Calif.-based LinkedIn is king among the few sites devoted to business networking.

At LinkedIn, members can post their professional credentials, search for jobs or employees, seek out college classmates, hunt for business opportunities and otherwise expand their network of business contacts.

Membership is free through www.linkedin.com, but most individuals are invited to join by an existing member. Once you join, you’re able to link to other members you know. These multiple connections act as a personal reference, of sorts, as well as a business lubricant.
If John Smith invites you to join, for instance, you can see what other members John also knows. You then can contact those members using John Smith as your common ground.
“In the real world, people are much more inclined to deal with you if they get a recommendation,” said LinkedIn co-founder Konstantin Guericke.

He said being able to see your friends’ contacts online is much more efficient than calling everyone in your Rolodex to ask if he or she knows a good lawyer or an accountant or someone who might be interested in buying your widgets.
Staffing executive Tina Boone has found her LinkedIn membership to be a valuable asset. A manager at Ajilon Professional Staffing in Sacramento, Boone uses LinkedIn to hunt efficiently for job candidates.

“I had a tough position to fill,” she recalls of one search. “But using LinkedIn, I was able to find a candidate who was working for one of our competitors.”
Boone said that as many as 25 percent of her job placements come via LinkedIn. “Doing a regular search, it might take me a month to find a candidate,” she said. But using LinkedIn, the candidate can be identified quickly.

Though it’s often compared to MySpace or Facebook, the social networking sites populated by teens and 20-somethings, LinkedIn is all business, Guericke said.
Aimed at 25- to 65-year-olds, the emphasis is on professional credentials, not members’ personal interests. LinkedIn does not allow members to post photos with their profiles.
As a networking site, it’s dwarfed by the 75 million members of MySpace, which logged 51.4 million unique visitors in May, compared with 519,000 for LinkedIn, according to comScore Media Metrix, which tracks online consumer traffic.
Founded in 2003, LinkedIn has grown largely by word of mouth, and has done virtually no advertising, Guericke said.

The privately held company won’t release financial figures, but Guericke said it has just begun to turn a profit — primarily on revenue from its premium services, which range from $95 to post a job opening to $200 a month for enhanced search and contact capabilities.
It has competitors, such as Ryze.com and Ecademy.com, but their membership falls far below that of LinkedIn. Ryze, for instance, claims 250,000 members on its Web site, while Ecademy boasts 80,000.

Sterling said LinkedIn “survived by being the site that offered the richest features,” Sterling said. “They got people in early enough so that it became the place you had to be.”
Akers said he’ll continue to use LinkedIn as a way to expand his network of business contacts. “We all try to do the best job we can of keeping our Rolodexes up to speed,” he said. “This is an additional tool to facilitate that.”