Have You Analyzed the Value of Your LinkedIn Network?

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When someone connects to you on LinkedIn, they gain the benefit of any non-overlapping  network connections from your first and second degree network. Your first degree connections become their second, and your second degree connections become their third.

Have you ever taken a look at your LinkedIn network at the first and second to see what your network value proposition is to people who may be interested in connecting with you?

Eric Jaquith has, and now so have I.

I highly recommend you do the same.

Using LinkedIn’s filters, I ran a search with no keywords for all of LinkedIn, selecting only my 1st and 2nd degree connections – no groups or “3rd + Everyone Else.” Here’s what my network looks like at the 1st and 2nd degree, from the perspective of the top 10 locations, industries, current companies, and past companies, as well as years of experience, seniority level, and Fortune 1000 rank.

Location

  1. US – 2,429,751
  2. UK – 322,985
  3. India – 320,595
  4. New York – 269,001
  5. San Francisco – 190,194
  6. Canada – 137,191
  7. Chicago – 130,545
  8. Netherlands – 110,712
  9. Boston – 107,740
  10. Washington, DC – 106,402

Eric – you’re unsurprisingly ahead of me in Singapore (26,417) and China (27,664), but not Brazil (54,026), Australia (77,598) or France (48,405). :-)

Industries

  1. Information Technology and Services – 596,824
  2. Computer Software – 293,808
  3. Financial Services – 181,826
  4. Telecommunications – 174,969
  5. Marketing and Advertising – 171,309
  6. Human Resources – 139,940
  7. Staffing and Recruiting – 129,602
  8. Management Consulting – 123,890
  9. Internet – 89,563
  10. Real Estate – 83,866

Current Company

  1. IBM – 19,064
  2. Microsoft – 18,746
  3. Oracle – 18,437
  4. Hewlett-Packard – 14,666
  5. Cisco – 12,916
  6. Dell – 7,559
  7. Deloitte – 7,390
  8. Bank of America – 7,205
  9. SAP – 6,773
  10. PwC – 6,325

Past Company

  1. IBM – 49,874
  2. Oracle – 33,105
  3. Hewlett-Packard – 30,903
  4. Accenture – 30,921
  5. Microsoft – 27,975
  6. PwC – 26,339
  7. AT&T – 21,632
  8. Deloitte – 19,116
  9. Sun Microsystems – 17,883
  10. JPMorgan Chase – 17,720

Years of Experience

  1. Less than 1 year – 51,136
  2. 1 to 2 years – 200,070
  3. 3 to 5 years – 607,905
  4. 6 to 10 years – 972,281
  5. More than 10 years – 1,986,017

Seniority Level

  1. Director – 413,913
  2. VP – 313,158
  3. Owner – 302,251
  4. CXO – 241,431
  5. Partner – 57,270

Fortune 1000

  1. Fortune 50 – 155,932
  2. Fortune 51-100 – 69,316
  3. Fortune 101 – 250 – 122,409
  4. Fortune 251-500 – 90,004
  5. Fortune 501-1000 – 96,588

Are We Connected on LinkedIn?

If you are not already connected to me on LinkedIn as a 1st level connection, now you have some insight into the value of my network should we become directly connected, because you would gain my non-overlapping 1st and 2nd degree connections as new 2nd and 3rd degree connections.

I recommend you perform a similar exercise as to the one I demonstrated above, to get a better understanding of the makeup of your first and second degree connections on LinkedIn.

Happy filtering!