To any women offended at being told they aren’t as savvy as men by LinkedIn…

… don’t worry.  LinkedIn doesn’t understand what savvy networking is.

Our friends at Business Matters magazine posted an article this morning reporting on a survey from professional networking site LinkedIn showing that men are “savvier online professional networkers” than women.

The gist?  Men have a better understanding of how to network, possibly because women are shy.  How have they determind this?  By creating a “savviness” ranking which is a function of two things: the ratio of connections that men have to connections that women have and the ratio of male members on LinkedIn to female members.

So it would sem that because women are fewer on LinkedIn and because they don’t collect contacts like football stickers they are, somehow, not as good at networking…

Putting aside the emotion in the statement they are making, I fundamentally disagree with LinkedIn’s assertion that the number of business cards in your online Rolodex shuld define how good you are at networking.  Networking is a means to an end, not an aim in itself.

I’d rather have a small network and do business with all of them then have a huge network and do business with none.

So, to my mind, your success as a networker is defined by the business getting done with you rnetwork, regardless of its size.  No mention of that from LinkedIn.  Or how good women in business are at that, which is, I think, how most of their colleagues will judge them.

I’m struggling to understand the point of this news release from LinkedIn other than to remind us all that they exist.  And that they do, although they’ve possibly become ever so slightly less apealling to business women.

Needless to say, we’ll welcome great networkers, whatever their gender, at WeCanDo.Biz!

 

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