TRENDS SOCIAL MEDIA
Global - Male employees have been found to be more adept at online business networking than women, especially at female-oriented industries.
According to a ranking survey by professional networking site LinkedIn, globally men are "savvier" online business networkers than their female counterparts. It defines "savviness" as a combined ratio of connections that men have to connections that women have and the ratio of male members on LinkedIn to female members.
Interestingly, men are comparatively savvier networkers in the cosmetics industry, which is conventionally thought of as female-dominated turf. Other industries that men are good at networking with their professional counterparts are medical, healthcare, legal and capital market.
Women, on the other hand, are comparatively better than men at networking in the agriculture, think tanks and tobacco sectors, which tend to have more male professionals. Females also tend to be savvier networkers in jobs involving alternative medicine, international trade and philanthropy.
One plausible reason behind the findings could be that the minority gender has to put in more effort at networking than the dominant sex in specific industries.
Nicole Williams, LinkedIn's connection director, noted that women may shy away from networking, because they relate it to "schmoozing or doling out business cards", when actually networking is about building relationships.
Williams said, "Having the right connections can make a difference when it comes to sealing a deal or landing a new client."
However, men and women are equally savvy networkers when it comes to gender-neutral sectors such as market research, media, and family services.
LinkedIn's results corroborate other research on gender differences in social network sharing, competition and multi-tasking.
___________________________________________________________________________
More quality Lighthouse titles
Get your marketing department up to speed with Asia's most read marketing site
marketing-interactive.com
Want to get on the right side of the procurement department?
Direct them to Procurement Asia
