Communications of the ACM
Connect to Human Networks To Find Breakout Opportunities
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Reid Hoffman, CEO of LinkedIn, weighs in on the importance of social networks in helping workers find new career opportunities. As Hoffman points out, breakout opportunities are what transform your career, and each of these opportunities revolves around people. If you're looking for an opportunity, you're really looking for people. If you're evaluating an opportunity, you're really evaluating people. If you're trying to gather resources to go after an opportunity, you're really trying to enlist the support and involvement of other people. A company doesn't offer you a job, people do. Opportunities flow through groups of people, and those with good ideas and information tend to hang out with one another.
As Hoffman points out, early versions of today's social networking sites existed in the U.S. as far back as the mid-18th century. Americans have always had a proclivity to form associations around interests, causes, and values. Small, informal networks are still uniquely efficient at circulating ideas, whether it's alumni groups from schools or conferences and industry meetings. If you want to increase your opportunity flow, join and participate in as many of these groups and associations as possible. There are plenty of networks at your fingertips where you are already an insider — you just have to be a little creative to think beyond traditional networks such as alumni groups.
Hoffman notes that his membership in a notable corporate alumni group in Silicon Valley — a group of former PayPal executives — has opened the door to a number of breakout opportunities. After eBay acquired PayPal, the members of the PayPal executive team each moved on to new projects but stayed connected, investing in one another's companies, hiring one another, sharing office space, and the like. There are no membership dues, no secret handshakes, and no monthly meetings — just informal collaboration. Yet these connections have spawned some of the most successful projects in Silicon Valley. There are several reasons why this network is such a uniquely rich source of opportunities: each individual is high quality; everyone has something in common (the shared experience of PayPal); there's geographic density; and there's a strong ethos of sharing and cooperation. For a network to be valuable, everyone has to want to invest in that network by pushing information and ideas through it.
From LinkedIn
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