Your career training resource.
Career Assessment Test — Align your career with your natural motivations and talents.
LinkedIn.com — List professional accomplishments, and be found by former colleagues, clients and partners.
Ryze.com — Expand your business network
It’s hard to argue with raw numbers. Social networks are commanding daily users somewhere in the range of 100 million combined. Those numbers aren’t even counting the numerous sites that users make for their favorite pets, tv shows and foods just for kicks. That number refers to the 100 million people who check in at least once a day to:
MySpace attracts almost 230,000 new user registrations a day. Their user base totals over 250 million. Facebook has more than 8 million photos uploaded each day, and is the seventh most-visited site for web surfers in the USA. Friendster, one of the longest-standing, high-traffic social networks, still commands over 30 million users.
These “super public” sites can be more than just fun and games. They can also be a great way to network with professionals and display your marketable talents. Your band won’t get signed from page hits, but you might get a business interview if you direct the right people to a carefully placed portfolio of your work experience. But is there a better way to focus your approach?
So you earned your degree. You have a few professional hours under your belt. You’ve taken the career assessment test. You know what you want to do, but you’re not sure where to start. Do you start with the want ads? The employment office? Taco Bell? Perhaps, but why not start by laying a bit more groundwork to gain some extra advantages?
Social networking can be fun, but you can also do it seriously to gain professional partnerships and peers. But to be effective, you don’t necessarily have to wade through millions of diversified interests in the high-traffic currents of sites like MySpace or Facebook. You can go straight to social networks that are already set up to address your specific professional needs. Social networks are not only sites, they’re models. They’re models designed to connect people with similar interests in beneficial ways. This can be for everything from finding that great new band, to that perfect romantic match, to your next great professional opportunity.
Two business-oriented social networking sites that work well are Linkedin.com and ryze.com. They’re both aimed at the same people who are looking to make professional connections and build a valuable portfolio, but they’re different in their functions.
These are just two examples of social network models that can help you begin your professional climb. There are more being created everyday to help address your specific needs and build your skills. Hit the search engines and keep your eyes open, because now more than ever, it’s easier to collect resources designed to help you in your journey.