LinkedIn Entry Hit a Raw Nerve
I guess yesterday's blog entry in which I asked why more college students and recent graduates don't use business networking site LinkedIn really hit a nerve. As of 9pm CT tonight, I've received six comments to the blog entry when most blog entries don't receive any comments and about twice as many via email.
The consensus seems to be that most don't use it because they don't know about it. Social networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace are known and used by almost all college students and recent graduates so that's where the buzz has been but few college career service office professionals use LinkedIn so aren't able to teach their students how to use it. Kennedy Information's free LinkedIn webinar on March 4th should fill in a few of those gaps. But the bottom line is that so far few college students use it so there's little viral spread on campus like there is amongst recruiters, sales people, and other professionals. Hopefully that will change.
But college students and recent graduates who are looking for a connection into an industry, organization, or department will find few tools as powerful as LinkedIn. I have a couple of thousand connections so am only a few degrees removed from virtually everyone who is part of LinkedIn. Want to become part of my network? My pleasure. Join here.
Sounds like an opportunity.
I am currently putting together a project with a Community College that foucses upon a specific niche and find that the academic world knows very little about LinkedIn. This seems counterintuitive to me.
Given that it's on of the largest business-focused social networks out there, and that recruiters and companies are increasingly turning to LinkedIn to source candidates, these institutions are doing a huge disservice to their graduating students.
I mean imagine if students actually got involved in their respective business communities PRIOR to graduating and had REAL WORLD and RELEVANT relationships built BEFORE the graduated from our bastions of higher learning. Wouldn't that transform the marketplace? Wouldn't that bring some real world applicabiliity to the lessons they are learning?