Battle of the Sexes: Who’s Net Works?

  • 1 min read

A recent study by LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network with more than 100 million members worldwide, surprisingly revealed that men are savvier online networkers than women. Two things determined “savviness”: the ratio of connections that men have to connections that women have, and the ratio of male members on LinkedIn to female members.

Logic would say females

LinkedIn also looked at this data by industry. Logic would say that in female-dominated industries, such as cosmetics, women would be the savvier sex when it comes to professional networking—right? Wrong. Men in the cosmetics industry tended to have larger networks than women. The same was true in male-dominated industries; in the tobacco and ranching industries, women were savvier networkers. Here’s a breakdown by industry:

Industry breakdown

Top U.S. industries where women are savvier online professional networkers than men

  1. Alternative dispute resolution
  2. Tobacco
  3. Alternative medicine
  4. Ranching
  5. International trade and development

Top U.S. industries where men are savvier online professional networkers than women

  1. Medical practice
  2. Hospital & health care
  3. Cosmetics
  4. Law enforcement
  5. Capital markets

LinkedIn’s data analytics teams believes this trend is due to the fact that the minority sex has to network harder than the dominant one to break into these industries.

Why are women losing out on the battle of the sexes when it comes to online networking? Nicole Williams, career expert and author of Girl on Top: Your Guide to Turning Dating Rules into Career Success, helped LinkedIn analyze the data and spoke with BNET’s On the Job about it. Here’s some of her insight:

While women are great communicators, men are more actively engaged in reaching out. Women also make few but deeper connections. We’re also finding that men are more comfortable with technology, and women may be better at networking in person.

On the Job’s Amy Levine-Epstein asked Williams, “So what should women focus on?” Williams shared these tips:

Women have to be more proactive in putting themselves out there and asking for what they want from connections. They also have to get more comfortable documenting what they’ve done without worrying about bragging.

Picture of Heather R. Huhman

Heather R. Huhman

Heather R. Huhman is a career expert and founder & president ​of Come Recommended, a career and workplace education and consulting firm specializing in young professionals. She is also the author of#ENTRYLEVELtweet: Taking Your Career from Classroom to Cubicle (2010), national entry-level careers columnist forExaminer.com and blogs about career advice at HeatherHuhman.com.

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