From the Washington Post's Wonkblog:
When it comes to getting a new job, personal connections can
be hugely important. Employers are more likely to hire someone if they
-- or another employee -- know firsthand that the applicant has a
certain skill set and an effective, professional demeanor.
But it turns out that personal connections are more important in some industries than others, according to new data
from professional networking site LinkedIn. To investigate how personal
connections affect the way companies hire new employees, LinkedIn
analyzed its hiring and networking data for every member who created a
new position at a company during the month of October 2014. They found
that, on average, 16 percent of new employees were already connected to
someone at the company via LinkedIn before the new hire came onboard.
Those
figures varied substantially by industry, however. The sectors that
were most likely to hire someone who was already connected to an
employee included computer games, computer and network security, venture
capital and private equity, and political organizations. For all of
these industries, more than a quarter of new hires were already
connected to at least one company employee via LinkedIn before they were
hired.
Peter
Rigano, who looks at analytics and data for LinkedIn, concludes that
highly specialized technical industries are more likely to hire from
within their own networks....
...
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