If you haven't heard by now, building a strong professional network is a key element in proactive career management. Actively participating in virtual networking sites such as LinkedIn as well as specialty sites that focus on your area of expertise or industry is a strategy many savvy professionals and executives are using today to dramatically expand their networks. But what if you are currently in or looking to establish a foothold in the international job market, or do a lot of business internationally?

In researching business networking sites recently, I have found that an international business networking site called "Xing" seems to be getting a considerable amount of buzz. Wikipedia's entry on Xing describes it as a social software platform providing a "small-world network" which the company says is used by professionals from more than 190 countries.

The majority of Xing's users appear to be Germans and people from German-speaking countries, although it has expanded its membership into many other countries including China and Japan and is steadily growing organically and also by acquisition. Available languages include English, German, Spanish, Portuguese, Italian, French, Dutch, Chinese, Finnish, Swedish, Japanese, Russian, Polish, Turkish and Hungarian. Xing's "About Us" page says "Around the world every day, over 5.7 million business professionals use XING - the global business network - in 16 languages to do business and promote their career."

Both Xing and LinkedIn were founded in 2003, but XING beat LinkedIn and all others to the punch by going public in 2006, the first Web 2.0 company to do so.

A reviewer at starreviews.com raves about the site, saying "The 6Star team was really impressed with XING's user forums. Can you believe there are more than 25,000 of them? Wow - talk about active networking at work. Honestly, you can spend days going through that treasure trove of useful information and, better yet, you can get to know other XING members while you do it."

Here's SEO blogger Dave Pye's assessment: "Xing: The "first Web 2.0 site to go public" definitely looks the part. The clean design, mobile capabilities, and numerous mentions in top trade publications make it 2.0 all the way. Purporting to transcend all countries, languages and industries - Xing is definitely a must for professionals who do a lot of business internationally. HQ: Hamburg, GER."

Xing is free to join, but there are also premium memberships available at a reasonable price. If you are looking to expand your horizons globally, you may want to check it out.

Article by, Laurie Smith and courtesy of CareerHub.com. The Career Hub blog connects job seekers with experts in career counseling, resume writing, personal branding and recruiting.