Friday, March 20, 2015

It's Not What You Know..."The Industries Where Personal Connections Matter the Most [and least] in Getting a Job"

From the Washington Post's Wonkblog:
When it comes to getting a new job, personal connections can be hugely important. Employers are more likely to hire someone if they -- or another employee -- know firsthand that the applicant has a certain skill set and an effective, professional demeanor.

But it turns out that personal connections are more important in some industries than others, according to new data from professional networking site LinkedIn. To investigate how personal connections affect the way companies hire new employees, LinkedIn analyzed its hiring and networking data for every member who created a new position at a company during the month of October 2014. They found that, on average, 16 percent of new employees were already connected to someone at the company via LinkedIn before the new hire came onboard.

Those figures varied substantially by industry, however. The sectors that were most likely to hire someone who was already connected to an employee included computer games, computer and network security, venture capital and private equity, and political organizations. For all of these industries, more than a quarter of new hires were already connected to at least one company employee via LinkedIn before they were hired.
Peter Rigano, who looks at analytics and data for LinkedIn, concludes that highly specialized technical industries are more likely to hire from within their own networks....
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