“If I had to characterize one quality as the genius of female thought, culture and action, it would be the connectivity.”
— Robin Morgan
It’s a recurring theme on the anitaborg.org website and at ABI events that when you build a network based on mutual benefit, everybody wins. For technical women, who often don’t study or work in the most supportive of environments, connecting online can provide a powerful support system. The more than 3,000 members of our Systers email listserv have been demonstrating that since 1987. But in today’s turbulent economy and strained job market, building and nurturing your professional network is more critical than ever. That’s why today’s savviest networkers are using a combination of Web 2.0 tools to supplement face-to-face contacts and email lists. Here are a few online communities that the Anita Borg Institute is actively using to help the sisterhood of technical women connect with and support each other.
First and foremost is our Anita Borg Institute (ABI) group on LinkedIn, an online community for making professional connections and finding jobs. This group for technical women and our supporters has been growing rapidly, and I see that partly as a sign of the times. I also see the LinkedIn group’s growth as a Very Good Thing. It means that:
- The technical women joining the group are taking care of themselves by highlighting their accomplishments and by actively expanding their networks.
- The hiring managers and recruiters who join are able to picture women filling the key technical positions for which they are hiring.
- The job-seeking women who join are improving their chances of connecting with those diversity-minded hiring managers and technical recruiters.
- Supporters of the Anita Borg Institute and our mission are actively seeking professional connections with others who care about the advancement of technical women.
In short, it means that every member of the Anita Borg Institute group is in a better position to help both themselves and each other. Many employers will look for you on LinkedIn even if they have your resume in hand. So if you join only one online community for professional networking, this is generally my top recommendation.
There’s been a flurry of news items recently about how businesses are using Twitter, a social network that many had originally deemed as frivolous as its name. Both businesses and individuals are successfully using Twitter to extend their reach and build their brands. I use the anitaborg_org Twitter account not only to share ABI news but also to raise awareness of both the accomplishments of and the challenges faced by technical women. How do I do this? By actively seeking out interesting women and organizations to follow; by tweeting (posting) about events, research and articles of interest to our sisterhood; and by retweeting (Twitter’s version of forwarding) others’ updates on related topics. I also use Twitter to share news about job openings. The Twitter community has started tagging (labeling) job openings with #jobs, #rtjobs or #jobangels. So when I see a job tweeted without a tag, I retweet and tag it so it will be picked up by a Twitter job search like this.
On Delicious, a social bookmarking site, ABI is sharing links to articles, blogs, job information, and other online resources for technical women. See http://delicious.com/anitaborginstitute/ for the full list or click on the tags for those related to specific topics, such as employment or technical women’s organizations. I’ve even tagged a couple of items on using social media to find work.
On Facebook, ABI offers several ways to connect around events like the upcoming Women of Vision Awards and the Grace Hopper Celebration of Women in Computing. In 2008 one of the Grace Hopper panels was presented by four students from different countries who first connected through the Grace Hopper 2008 Facebook group, and every day women interested in this year’s conference are joining the Grace Hopper 2009 group. So Facebook is a great place to connect with others around ABI events, as well as Facebook being a great place to reconnect with former classmates and coworkers.
In my next blog post I’ll share some pointers on how to make the best use of these social networks to help you and your sisters survive these challenging times. You’ll find more information on the Anita Borg Institute online communities on the Connect page.
March 7th, 2011 at 8:38 pm
[...] of technical women are either looking for work or wisely preparing for it, just in case. In my last blog post I described some of the social networks the Anita Borg Institute uses to help technical women [...]