That's why so many professionals devote hours going to social events, making phone calls and eating lunch with colleagues. But in the Internet age, more and more people are finding that making connections online is faster and easier.
"For me, [networking] is 90 percent Web-based. Some people are telephone people and others are e-mail people. I'm definitely an e-mail person," says David Bradford, co-founder of Provo-based FundingUniverse.com.
Social networking Web site MySpace.com is now second only to Yahoo Inc. in total page views, according to comScore Media Metrix. Professional networking sites such as LinkedIn, Ryze and CollectiveX hope to harness that kind of power by catering to the business crowd.
These Web sites are not for finding a soul mate or sharing favorite tunes, they're for finding employees, connecting with potential clients and getting ahead.
Three-year-old LinkedIn, which is the largest of the sites, has 5.7 million members, 3 million of whom joined in 2005 alone.
More than 16,000 people in the Salt Lake area belong to LinkedIn, a 169 percent increase from one year ago.
Professionals can join LinkedIn for free.
Members search for former colleagues and classmates and invite people they know - whether they belong to LinkedIn already or not - to join their contact list. Those contacts also have contacts who become "second degree" connections. The contacts of "second degree" connections are "third degree."
Members are only allowed to contact other LinkedIn users up to three degrees away for free, asking mutual contacts to make introductions. Beyond that they can sign up for "premium services," paying $20 per month for three contacts. The system is designed to prevent spamming of members.
Even with only three first-degree contacts, a member can have a network of more than 100,000 people for free.
Users can also pay to post jobs, which costs $95 per listing, advertise services, find job candidates or set up a group account for a professional organization.
Bradford, an attorney who lives in Provo and Newport Beach, supplements his own enormous e-mail database with an account on LinkedIn, where he has 830 first-degree contacts.
Bradford hasn't had to use any paid services on LinkedIn, but he has been able to introduce a technology client to an eBay executive via the site.
On LinkedIn, members fill out profiles that include current job titles, past experience and education. The can also indicate what they hope to accomplish using LinkedIn, such as advancing their careers or finding contractors. Members' contacts can post endorsements.
"We see LinkedIn becoming the place where professionals keep their information. They don't even need to keep resumés any more. They can write their profiles to be like resumés," says Konstantin Guericke, co-founder of LinkedIn.
Guericke says some hiring managers use LinkedIn to do background checks. They also review endorsements, experience and number of connections to see how the job candidate forms relationships. A person applying for a job can search for an executive with a company and use a mutual contact to get introduced.
"With any job there might be 40 or 50 people who want it. The ones who get an interview, came in with a referral," Guericke says. "Relationships make a big difference in professional success."
Still many networking gurus will argue that nothing can replace face-to-face interactions.
"You can't replicate that" online, says Richard Nelson, president and chief executive of the Utah Technology Council, a professional organization for technology companies.
The group holds events about four times per month, including peer-to-peer forums for chief executives, technology officers, marketing directors and human resource managers.
Even professionals on the cutting edge of technology need to build relationships the old-fashioned way, Nelson says. But he considers networking Web sites a useful way to augment those relationships.
Marty Fahncke, president of Sandy-based consulting firm FawnKey & Assoc., says he has found about 10 contractors on LinkedIn for clients.
"I've found copy writers, video producers and graphic artists," Fahncke says. "The cool thing about [LinkedIn] is you get an idea of how good a person might be before you contact them."
rwinters@sltrib.com
