Top Recommended People Group Demographics!

Lots happening to the Top Recommended People group since my last post.

To begin, and probably the most significant change, is that Erika Hanson Brown has agreed to accept the role of manager of the group which was previously announced on December 15^th, 2009. Since that time, she has posted great discussion items, and has been actively helping me manage the influx of new members and discussion posts. Please give Erika your full support, she deserves it!

The group stands at 1,566 members today!

As many of you may know, I have been working for a couple of weeks on Top Recommended People group demographics. The following statistics represent a summary of the findings:

Countries

The group clearly has worldwide representation! This is a list of the 42 countries represented:

Argentina, Australia, Bangladesh, Belgium, Brazil, Canada, Caribbean Islands, China, Commonwealth of Nations, Costa Rica, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Finland, France, Germany, India, Indonesia, Ireland, Israel, Italy, Japan, Korea, Lebanon, Malaysia, Malta, Mexico, Netherlands, Norway, Pakistan, Romania, Russian Federation, Saudi Arabia, South Africa, Spain, Switzerland, Thailand, Turkey, United Arab Emirates, United Kingdom, United States of America and Venezuela!!

The largest percentage of members in the group representing the top 10 countries are: Not unexpectedly, the United States at 82.1%, United Kingdom at 5.2%, India at 3%, Canada at 2.4%, Australia at 0.8%, the Netherlands at 0.7%, Brazil at 0.6% and the final three are tied at 0.4% in alphabetical order Argentina, Denmark, and Spain.

U.S. States

Focusing on the 82.1% of the group members in the United States, because of the way Linkedin™ works, not all states are represented. For example, Greater Boston includes New Hampshire and Greater New York includes New Jersey.  The 12 states not presently represented in the Top Recommended People group’s demographic data are Alaska, Delaware, Mississippi, Montana, New Hampshire, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Dakota, South Dakota, Vermont, West Virginia, and Wyoming.  Know any Top Recommended People who live there?

The number and percentage of Top Recommended People members that live in the U.S.’s Top 10 states are: North Carolina #173 or 13.5%, Massachusetts #163 or 12.8%, California #142 or 11.1%, New York #128 or 10.0%, Texas #84 or 6.6%, Georgia #79 or 6.2%, Illinois #50 or 3.9%, Florida #48 or 3.8%, Ohio #46 or 3.6%, Colorado #39 or 3.1%.

By Industry Worldwide

The number and percentage of Top Recommended People members who work in the Top 10 industries are:  Not surprisingly, Information Technology and Services is at the top with #348 or 22.3%, Staffing and Recruiting #118 or 7.5%, Marketing and Advertising #111 or 7.1%, Management Consulting #84 or 5.4%, Computer Software #80 or 5.1%, Financial Services #77 or 4.9%, Human Resources #64 or 4.1%, Professional Training and Coaching #64 or 4.1%, Telecommunications #45 or 2.9%, Internet #40 or 2.6%.

Employed/Self Employed/Unemployed

As you can imagine, trying to determine whether an individual is employed, self employed, or unemployed represents a unique challenge. You see, when someone is unemployed they are not likely to be sitting on their hands. The unemployed are often working on other projects, roles, or simply consulting.  Therefore, wherever possible, I would default those profiles to “self” employed. Only if I saw a clear indication that the person was actively seeking employment would I default that profile to unemployed.  Hence, the following statistics are likely to be somewhat over inflated in the self employed category.  From an overall prospective:  #948 or 60.7% are employed, #402 or 25.7% are self employed, and #206 or 13.2% are unemployed. These are Top Recommended People, 13.2% unemployed, amazing.  So much for the federal statistics!

Unemployed by Industry

Due to the size of the population in each industry, for the purpose of this write-up, I am ignoring certain industries. For example, Machinery and Textiles show 100% unemployment, but the population was 1 member.  However, some industries appear to be particularly hard hit. For example, Semiconductors shows 66.7% unemployment, 3 members employed and 6 not! I guess people aren’t buying electrical components!

The following industries are also particularly hard hit, with a population large enough to draw statistical comparisons: Banking 42.9%, Computer Hardware 36.4%, Hospitality 30.8%, Consumer Goods 28.6%, Electrical/Electronic Manufacturing 28.6%, and Medical Devices 28.6%. Given the current state of the economy, all make perfect sense, except perhaps Medical Devices.

Other industries impacted are: Insurance (think AIG) 23.8%, Retail 20.0%, Financial Services (TARP?) 19.5% and Human Resources 18.8%.

Also particularly hard hit with a large number of members are Telecommunications 17.8%, and an industry near and dear to my heart, Information Technology and Services 17.2%. As would be expected Marketing and Advertising was also impacted at 13.5%, and Computer Software at 12.5%.

At the bottom end of the scale, some industries seem to have weathered the current economy better. They are: Management Consulting 4.8%, Professional Training and Coaching 4.7%, and Staffing and Recruiting 3.4%. It looks like if you are a management consultant or a professional trainer or coach, you lucked out.

Staffing and Recruiting appears to be a statistical anomaly because if there are no jobs, why wasn’t that industry harder hit? The only thing that would make sense is that some recruiters list their industry as Human Resources, so their job losses may be covered under the 18.8% Human Resources category.

Recommendations

It only seems fitting in a group based on a minimum number of recommendations, that we provide statistics around recommendations.  There are 14 members with over 100 recommendations, and believe it or not, we have identified 13 members who have, or are displaying less than the required 10.

For those members that do not meet the minimum level of 10 to join or remain members will be given a certain period of time to return back to the minimum level, or be asked to leave. I’d be interested in what the members feel is a reasonable period of time. We can assure you that all had 10 when they joined, however, since recommendations are dynamic, they can increase or decrease at any time.

The top 10 members with the most recommendations include, in descending order:

Steven Burda………………………………….2,903

Jeff Hodgkinson.…………………………..…..442

Mike O’Neil…………………………………..……252

Chad Coe……………………………………………222

James (Jim) Patrick…………………………..190

Janice Worthington……………………….….189

J.D. Gershbein……………………………….….116

Jim Nudelman……………………………….….116

Brian Schulman…………………………………116

Marie Schulmann………………………………116

The average number of recommendations each member has is 24.9. If we statistically remove the top ten and the bottom 13 (below the minimum 10) from the calculation, that average recommendation number drops to 22.2 per member average.

Top Recommended People Subgroups (and Hiring Group)

There are a number of Top Recommended People subgroups.  For example, there is Gold (25 to 99 recommendations), Platinum (100-499 recommendations), and Elite (500+).  Based on the statistics compiled, 431 Top Recommended People members qualify for the Gold subgroup, but only 184 have joined.  There are 13 members who qualify to join the Platinum subgroup, however only 7 have opted to join. Only one member qualifies for Elite, and he has chosen not to join.

For the separate Top Recommended People – Hiring group, only 95 have joined indicating an active job search or recruiting, however based on the statistics, at least 206 are unemployed.

There are only 50 members of the “Open Networker” subgroup but our feeling is that more than 3.1% of the Top Recommended People membership would consider themselves Open Networkers.

There are only 34 members of the Twitter subgroup, however, 585 members display their Twitter™ ID’s on their Linkedin™ profiles indicating, at least some interest at having other people follow them.

So, my question to the group is: Are the subgroups (and Hiring) providing any value?

Relationship “Levels”

As many of you know, groups allow you to “communicate”, that is, send e-mails to people who are not 1^st level connected to you. Without having a paid Linkedin™ account, if you are not in a group together, you can only be introduced to 2^nd level contacts through a 1^st level contact of your own.  3^rd level contacts are considered “out of your network”, and therefore cannot be contacted other than through a paid account’s InMail, or introduced through a 1st and 2nd level contact. Groups significantly change this picture.

For example, 286 members, or 18.2% of the Top Recommended People membership would be considered 3^rd level to me, and therefore, without the Top Recommended People group, or other groups we share, I may never have met or corresponded with them. Amazing!

An additional 984 members or 62.8% would be considered 2^nd level for me, and therefore without the Top Recommended People group, or other groups we share, I would have needed to be introduced to them by one of my 800+ 1^st level connections.

Finally, 298 members or 19.0% are 1^st level connected to me. I routinely accept 1^st level connection requests from members of Top Recommended People, so I find this number to be less than I would expect.

Twitter™

The “marriage” between Linkedin™ and Twitter™ appears to be a marriage made in heaven.  What easier way is it to grow your Twitter™ following by putting your Twitter™ ID on your Linkedin™ profile? There are 585 members of Top Recommended People showing their Twitter™ ID on their Linkedin™ profile, or 37.3%. There are likely other members who use Twitter™ who do not want to link their Linkedin™ profile to their Twitter™ profile.

Membership Growth

At the time of this writing, 1,568 members joined the group in its 280 days of existence since March 21^st 2009. That growth translates to 5.6 new members joining each and every day!

Potential Group Conference

Now that group demographics have been compiled, we are trying to determine interest in holding a Top Recommended People group conference (or possibly regional conferences). We would likely be able to have guest speakers present, and may even be able to secure some corporate sponsorship to keep the overall costs down. Obviously, it would be a significant effort to arrange such an event. If you think it is a good idea, and would be interested in attending an event like this, please let us know. If you have ideas around presentation topics, or even potential corporate sponsors, please share them with us.

Other observations

Names with other information like link #’s, phone #’s, etc. are not only against Linkedin™’s policy, but make it extremely difficult to extract and sort names. Linkedin™ does delete people who do not adhere to their policies from time to time, so please be forewarned.

Many members have put “Top Recommended People” in their Professional Headline, which makes the record searchable on Linkedin™, and helps to promote the group. If you have it there, thank you.

Please let me or Erika know if you have any questions. We now know much more about the Top Recommended People group, than we did yesterday!

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