BY ANYA KHALAMAYZER
LINKEDIN HAS evolved significantly from a Web-based platform just for professionals to tout their qualifications. The site is now populated with in-terest-specific groups, which risk managers
have been utilizing for the past four years
to connect and share news and advice. In
this context, the social site goes beyond
mere networking to foster true learning.
A search for risk-management-related
groups displays more than 2,500 results—
with groups whose sizes range from the
hundreds to the tens of thousands.
Some of the larger ones: The Risk
Managers group with 37,979 members,
and the Workers Comp Analysis group
with 14,342 members. Those joining range
from top executives and managers to entry-level employees.
Content includes news, surveys,
questions, links to conferences and
webinars, and provocative articles such
as “Top 10 Reasons Your Enterprise Risk
Management Program Won’t Work,” and
“How Does Your Organization Address
Social Engineering?”
The questions being asked during
group discussions run the gamut from best
practices in operational risk and regulation
to the implementation of Basel II (the
global regulatory standard on bank-capital
adequacy, stress testing and market-liquidity
risk), to the more esoteric (“What is the
biggest risk to human society?”).
Finding a job is not why anyone
belongs to the group… There is
an endless list of posted topics.
Everyone’s got something new to say.”
Chris Mandel, Owner of the Enterprise Risk
Management group on LinkedIn
Carfang tells an anecdote of meeting
LinkedIn connections a world away from
his workplace, which sponsors 25 forums
with an average growth rate of 250 new
members weekly.
“I’m based in Chicago, but as I was
walking down the business district in Hong
Kong, wearing our company badge for a
conference, I had people approach me and
say they belong to my LinkedIn group as
well. So it’s pretty good evidence that it
builds the brand.” NU
