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Written by Rob Marano, EE ’93
Co-Founder, CUAA LinkedIn Group
Technology forms the foundation of all our communications first starting with the written word, then in the last century advancing to telephony, to email, and now to social networks following us around on our mobile devices. Communications drive our daily lives at home and on the job, assisting us in more and more ways with each incremental advancement. Technology enables us to achieve high levels of productivity as well as to accomplish more in less time. We now are able to expand our social and professional connections beyond a handshake and beyond time and space. Social networking - the latest advancement in technology and communications - delivers professional and personal development in an instant, allowing us to extend our reach well beyond the first degree of separation. Many social networks exist that serve many purposes, including keeping in touch with friends and families, showcasing ones creative talents, and serving as a professional resume. Well-known social networks today include Facebook, Google+, MeetUp, MySpace, Pinterest, Twitter, Foursquare, and many more. One social network that stands out for maintaining and cultivating your professional life remains LinkedIn.
With over 175 million users worldwide, LinkedIn serves as the largest professional social network in the world. As of June 2012 LInkedIn includes executives from all Fortune 500 companies as registered members, and over 80 of the Fortune 100 companies use LinkedIn as part of their corporate hiring solutions. Over 2 million companies have launched LinkedIn Company Pages to serve as professional social networking hubs. LinkedIn has evolved into the modern black book for professionals to connect with one another. The LinkedIn Profile Page for any user has become the modern curriculum vitae, complementing and in some industries replacing the resume. LinkedIn shares their mission as “to connect the world’s professionals to enable them to be more productive and successful” by “making services available that help you, your connections, and millions of other professionals meet, exchange ideas, learn, make deals, find opportunities or employees, work, and make decisions in a network of trusted relationships and groups.”
Any profession thrives on a well cultivated and vibrant network, connecting you to clients/customers, prospects, suppliers, vendors, partners, government, universities, journalists, and other professionals that complement your work, as well local and distant peers. Technology helps to grow and maintain your professional network much more easily than ever before. One day you can get advice from an architect in California, who you see is connected to an engineer in Berlin, who subsequently connects you to a designer in Shanghai - and you did this right from your office on the Internet using your browser, LinkedIn and the effective writing skills you learned at our alma mater!
Never before have any of us been connected so rapidly and efficiently together than today. The power of the network does work for you, but you need to be “on it” and active with it, with a completed profile, participating on the groups of like-minded professionals. We at the Cooper Union Alumni Association created the “Cooper Union Alumni Group on LinkedIn” in order to connect our alumni together in a professional manner. We hear time and time again that our Alumni love to connect with one another because “we get it,” and it’s refreshing and exciting to engage with one another - just like we did while at Cooper. Come join our LinkedIn group and get active with the top talent of art, architecture and engineering from our alma mater. We can together connect and scale our professional networks, develop those opportunities to help one another by answering questions, providing guidance and mentoring, and uncovering relevant leads. Jason Alba, author of I’m On LinkedIn, Now What? (see http://imonlinkedinnowwhat.com), explains the six major benefits gained from LinkedIn:
- The ability to be known and enhance your professional brand
- The opportunity to be found by recruiters (agency or company’s HR)
- The ability to find other professionals and make important connections
- The opportunity to learn from other professionals and share your experiences, network and skills
- The ability to connect with like-minded professionals who join a particular group
- The opportunity to show you are plugged in to modern technology and business processes
Join us on the Cooper Union LinkedIn Alumni Group at http://www.linkedin.com/groups?gid=41777, no matter if you are an alum, student, faculty or staff. We are 2,086 strong and growing with more of us from the Cooper community. Let’s grow our professional Cooper Union community together!