MANILA,
Philippines - LinkedIn is the largest
online social networking site for professionals in the world, with over 150
million users globally. About 25 million of these are in the Asia Pacific, the
fastest-growing region in terms of users for the site—and in the Philippines,
LinkedIn recently passed one million members.
Leaps And Bounds
LinkedIn
was founded in 2003 in Mountain View, California. It currently has offices in
Amsterdam, Bangalore, Delhi, Dublin, London, Melbourne, Milan, Mumbai, Munich,
Paris, São Paulo, Singapore, Stockholm, Sydney, Tokyo and Toronto, and has more
than 2,000 employees.
LinkedIn
is about “enhancing people’s online brand,” says LinkedIn managing director for
Southeast Asia, New Zealand and Australia, Clifford Rosenberg, “by connecting
people and companies worldwide.” Users upload their CVs and résumés into their
online profiles and make connections with fellow professionals. It has become a
very popular social and promotional tool for job-seekers, recruiters and
employers.
Four of
the 16 languages that LinkedIn is available in come from the Asia-Pacific
region. “This is a very fast-growing region for us,” says Rosenberg. He adds
that the data the site gathers from users worldwide helps the company adapt its
products for each region, and helps it evaluate opportunities in the market
that will help the recruiters, employers and job seekers that use their services.
In
January, LinkedIn received 100.1 million unique visitors and three billion page
views per month, ranking number 33 on comScore and marking a 34.5 percent
year-on-year growth rate. In 2011, there were over four billion searches on
LinkedIn, mostly looking up individual professionals’ names as well as company
names.
Another Social Networking Site?
Some
consider Facebook as a notorious timewaster, decreasing productivity among
employees. Wouldn’t another social networking site just add to the problem?
Rosenberg believes that LinkedIn can do the opposite: “We’re about trying to
save people time rather than waste time,” he insists. “We are adding
productivity tools and processes that make professionals even more productive,
like mobile applications and services that users can download.”
Rosenberg
also believes that the enormous number of accounts on LinkedIn does not
diminish the value of the site for its users. “The more we scale up and add on
new members, the more we benefit recruiters,” he says. This is because many of
their users are what he calls “passive job candidates”—already with a job and
not actively looking for another one, but “they’re developing their online
brand for recruiters and potential employers to discover. The more the database
and talent pool out there, the better for recruiters, especially for jobs that
are in high demand,” Rosenberg explains.
He also
adds that LinkedIn’s mission is connecting the world’s professionals to make
them more productive and successful, and career opportunities and connectivity
take top priority. “We are all about professional context,” Rosenberg says.
“When we speak to our members, time and again they tell us they want to
separate their social profile with what they’re doing in their professional lives.
So they have their Facebook pages where they communicate with friends and
family, and they have a profile on LinkedIn so that they can enhance their
online brand. We’re optimized for the web. When your name is searched in a
professional context and they get your LinkedIn profile,” he says, “it’s
showing you in the best professional light.”
LinkedIn In The Philippines
As of
press time, LinkedIn has surpassed one million users in the Philippines. Of
this number, 62,723 are listed as “entrepreneurs”.
By
LinkedIn membership, the top three universities are the University of the
Philippines, De La Salle and Ateneo, and the top three industries in the
country are information technology, education management and accounting. While
professionals from the technology- and media-based industries were
unsurprisingly the first ones to get on to LinkedIn, the range of industries
with professionals on the site have expanded, says Rosenberg. “The kind of
businesses we see [with many professionals on LinkedIn] include mining,
tourism, medical industries, travel, BPOs [business process outsourcing firms],
agribusiness and manufacturing,” he informs.
Making LinkedIn Work For You
According
to LinkedIn data, 80 percent of recruiters are now using social media and the
web when sourcing candidates for a job, and an online profile on LinkedIn might
just be the thing that brings them to potential jobseekers.
“Your
profile is like a constantly evolving CV or résumé that’s more
three-dimensional than if it were just a Word document or PDF,” says Rosenberg.
The more complete your profile, the better. “Professionals are realizing more
and more that they need to be their own chief marketing officers and need to
take control of their careers and personal brand,” he adds.
BARBARA
MARCHADESCH
mb.com.ph
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