The economic crisis slamming firms across the globe has sparked a spike in usage of professional networks — Xing and LinkedIn are key sites — as people hedge against losing work and the laid-off seek jobs.
Traffic on the world’s top professional Web networks has surged since the financial crisis started to make headlines, with LinkedIn, notching 25 percent more registrations in September than forecast.
“Nobody has ever seen anything like this before,” said Kevin Eyres, head of LinkedIn`s operations in Europe. “Now we are growing by almost one new user each second.” Membership on LinkedIn has jumped to more than 31 mn from 18 mn at the start of the year, growing fastest in the financial services, media, education and technology fields, Eyres said.
“Given that a lot of professionals are currently losing or are worried about losing their job, it makes sense that career-focused social networks such as LinkedIn should see a boost in traffic,” said Martin Olausson, director of the digital media strategies unit at research firm Strategy Analytics.
He estimated the size of the online professional social networking market at about $170 million this year.
Professional sites seek to distance themselves from social networks such as Facebook with their more sober approach, and by giving members more control over their profiles.
Richard Evans, director at U.K.-based Sheridan Evans Executive Search, said he has seen a rising number of requests to connect on professional Web networks: these are increasingly about the need for a job.
Sheridan Evans uses both LinkedIn and Xing, but also Paris-headquartered Viadeo and the largest address-book site Plaxo, to identify candidates. It has directed people to their new jobs using such networks, Evans said.
“The recruitment industry in general is being hit hard. In financial services it’s clearly very bad. In construction it’s bad. In retail it’s getting bad,” said Evans
