There are plenty of business professionals that continue to consider LinkedIn only as a means to find their next job. While that is part of LinkedIn’s value, the rapidly growing membership have helped evolve it into an incredible resource. In fact, I have not previously seen anyone publish a blog on the real value of LinkedIn Groups, which articulates WHY each of you should join and participate in groups a few times each week. Since the “why” seems overdue, here are “why” I believe more should seek out LinkedIn Groups that will be helpful:
- Role-specific LinkedIn Groups can help you do your job better.
- LinkedIn Groups can keep you abreast of industry-specific news or trends about your role.
- Members (and their posts) can help you be more informed about “best practices” in your role, how best to present your objectives to senior management, upcoming events designed to broaden your scope, expose you to new vendors, etc.
- LinkedIn Groups can broaden your exposure to peers facing the same issues as you do, in your role.
- And, yes, role-specific LinkedIn Groups can be a great place to post or find job openings that fit your skills and needs.
Having closely studied role-specific LinkedIn Groups quite closely since 2013-14, here are my best recommendations for anyone in IT Procurement and/or IT Strategic Sourcing. No matter the group name, I believe all of these will be helpful. You can click the html link to the right, visit the group and request membership from the volunteer Group Admin(s). Please know that the Admins are volunteer, from the LinkedIn community, and they attend to membership requests in their spare time.
The Procurement Foundry
I’d also like to draw your attention to an Organization that started as a group, but has now become a full slack collaboration community – Procurement Foundry. They’re seeing enormous success and growth because the information and events they promote are incredibly content rich! Although their purpose is general to all procurement, they offer great content for those in IT Procurement roles. Best way to start is to “follow” their LinkedIn company profile and sign-up for their newsletter here:
www.linkedin.com/company/procurement-foundry/
For those in IT Procurement roles, I hope this blog is useful to you and I’ll encourage you to share it with your peers. If you believe I’ve inadvertently excluded any valuable LinkedIn Group mentions, please connect to me at LinkedIn (www.linkedin.com/in/brentjanderson65/), send me an InMail and be sure to include the specific URL. I’d be honored to add your suggestions to this blog and continue to update it in service to the community.
Enjoy your holidays and please be safe!
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