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"The Social Network as a Career Safety Net"

By Brett Gilbert

On August 13, 2008, the New York Times published an article by Sarah Jane Tribble entitled "The Social Network as a Career Safety Net," in which Ms. Tribble discusses how important social networking sites like LinkedIn can be in the job search process.

LinkedIn is a great resource. It's a networking site like Facebook or MySpace, but on a much more professional level. In fact, CSO created a Touro Law Center Community group which you can join to stay in contact with other members of the Touro community. CSO has a presence on Facebook, too.

Go here to read the entire article.

If you have avoided social-networking sites like LinkedIn and Facebook with the excuse that they are the domain of desperate job hunters or attention-seeking teenagers, it?s time to reconsider.

In a world of economic instability and corporate upheaval, savvy professionals like the technology consultant Josh So epitomize the benefits of brushing up your online image and keeping it polished.

When Mr. So, a 32-year-old from Dublin, Calif., learned he had 45 days to find a new job before his company eliminated his division, he turned to friends online.

Within hours of updating his job status on the social-networking site LinkedIn, Mr. So won four job interviews through his contacts there. Within a week, two of the interviews resulted in offers. And within less than a month, his employer counter-offered with a position in another division and a $25,000 bump in his annual salary.

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While it lacks the glamour of more popular sites like MySpace and Facebook, LinkedIn ?is the place to be,? said the JupiterResearch media analyst Barry Parr, if you want to make professional contacts online. LinkedIn is a ?Chamber of Commerce mixer,? he said.

LinkedIn has more than 25 million members, and it is adding new ones at the rate of 1.2 million a month ? or about one new networker every two seconds.

With that kind of mass demographic, LinkedIn is hard to ignore. But with that kind of scale, can it be useful? It can be if you use it judiciously.

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Full post as published by Touro Law Center Career Services Office on August 14, 2008 (boomark / email).