More Filipino professionals use this website to exchange ideas, opportunities

MANILA, Philippines – Filipinos may still be hardwired to maintain online profiles but one million are at least making an effort to separate their professional and personal identities, according to US-based professional networking site LinkedIn.

The California-based site for professionals has reached its milestone mark of one million members in the Philippines, many of them in the business process outsourcing and energy sectors.

Worldwide, it has 150 million members, 25 million of which are in the Asia Pacific region and four million in Southeast Asia. Its members currently include executives from 2011 Fortune 500 companies.

“Well, we speak to our 150 million members and they want to be able to separate what they do with their social lives (with family and friends) with what they do in their professional lives,” said LinkedIn managing director for Southeast Asia and New Zealand Clifford Rosenberg in a recent teleconference with Manila-based reporters.  

“I think professionals around the globe are seeing the importance of their online profile which is why we have grown so fast. Professionals now think of themselves as their own chief marketing officers,” he added.

For the uninitiated, LinkedIn functions like other social networking page except that it is especially devoted to advancing the professional image of its members. 

Professionals can take advantage of the site to manage their work identities, connect with other professionals, gain insight from the community and find new career or business opportunities.

For employers, it enables them to scout for new talents.

LinkedIn recently came up with new products such as daily news updates for specific industries and company pages. It has also expanded its mobile presence and is now offered as an application for smart phones and tablet computers.

“In LinkedIn, they can develop their own professional brand. And what people want is that when their name is searched in the Internet, it is their professional profile that comes up first. That is when LinkedIn comes in. It shows you in the best possible professional light,” said Rosenberg.

In the Philippines, 62,723 of the current one million members are registered as “entrepreneurs.”

Many are otherwise professionals in the fields of information technology and services, education management.

Rosenberg said the site also has a strong following among professionals and employers in the sectors of mining, tourism, medical, travel, agribusiness, manufacturing, and logistics. 

Citing data from third party sources, Rosenberg said 80 percent of hiring managers worldwide use online social networking sites as a reference in evaluating candidates. While no immediate data is available for the Philippines, Rosenberg said the number of hiring managers turning to the web for reference is growing.

“In the Philippines, the number is growing. So what we do is look at Fortune 100 companies and we discover that 80 percent of them use LinkedIn to source talents and many of them are in the Philippines,” he said.

Rosenberg said recruiters rely on LinkedIn’s large talent pool to find “passive candidates” or high-skilled professionals who are currently employed and are not actively looking for a job but may be suited for key positions in their companies.

LinkedIn, which was founded in 2003, is headquartered in Silicon Valley, Mountain View, California but has offices in Amsterdam, Bangalore, Delhi,Dublin, London, Melbourne, Milan, Mumbai, Munich, Paris, Sao Paulo, Singapore, Sydney, Tokyo, and Toronto.

It reaps revenues from advertising sales and hiring solutions.

Rosenberg said the network is growing at a rate of two new members per second.

He said that while LinkedIn still does not have an offfice in the Philippines, it considers the country as an important market.

“We are extremely interested in the Philippine market. And now that we have reached one million members, we are learning from our members in the country. It is a strong region for us,” he said. “When we evaluate a market, we look at the number of professionals in the country, the size of the advertising market, among all other criteria.”

To date, LinkedIn’s worldwide unique visitors (UUs) in Jan 2012 are registered at 100.1 million, a year-on-year growth of 34.5 percent for a global rank of 33rd most visited website in the world based on data from comScore, an international provider of digital marketing intelligence.  

LinkedIn launched its initial public offering (IPO) in May 2011. Its stock price soared to as much as almost $93 on the first trading day, stoking fears of another Internet bubble as the IPOs of other web companies such as Zynga, Groupon and Pandora Media tanked in the stock market.

“We just focus on adding value to our market and connecting professionals around the globe,” Rosenberg said. 

He said that for now, LinkedIn is a hundred percent forcused on maintaining its identity as a website for professional networking.

“At LinkedIn, what we try to do is to make professionals more productive,” he said.” We are producing tools and products on LinkedIn that will make professionals more professionals than they are already.”

The company has also expanded its mobile operations through the launch of applications for smart phones and tablet computers.

So how can jobseekers maximize the use of their LinkedIn profiles to advance their careers?

First, having a profile photo and complete profile information will make your LinkedIn profile 12 times more likely to be viewed for job opportunitites by LinkedIn’s four billion active searchers.

It is also recommended that one builds his network before he needs it. It is recommended that a member has at least 50 trusted contacts in his network.

One must also keep his profile updated. A LinkedIn profile is a chance to showcase your skills and help the right people find their way to you. A strong recommendation from those who have worked with can highlight your strengths and show that you are valuable as an employee.