Update your status, update your job in ibibo

More and more people are using professional social networking websites to upgrade their job profiles and climb the ladder of success.Nineteen-year old Chandani Nasir, a second-year science student and winner of iFreshface contest on social networking site www.Ibibo.com, has taken on the fashion world practically sitting at home. She had logged on to ibibo.com to check out her friend’s profile but ended up uploading her pictures on the website as a part of an ongoing ‘Model Hunt’ contest. Nasir went on to win the contest and bagged a free portfolio shot by one of leading fashion photographers, Daboo Ratnani. The student-cum-model also got picked by Elite Model Management, which now handles all her modelling contracts. As Nasir starts her new profession, she recounts her aha moment and how it made her a believer in professional networking and the importance of building profile pages on social sites. “Had I not logged on to the social networking portal, my student to model transition would have cost me Rs 2-3 lakh,” she smiles.

Welcome to the world of professional social networking, where graduates log on to find summer internships, out-of-work executives fish for prospective employers, and young entrepreneurs claim to bag business deals over casual ‘notes’.

Admittedly, professional social networking phenomenon is still in its infancy at least when compared to job portals like Naukri.com. The site has over 2 lakh listed jobs at any point of time and serves over 34,000 corporate clients. No wonder , Yogesh Bansal, founder & CEO , ApnaCircle is focused on drawing a critical mass to his site, which at present has just about half a million subscribers. He also admits that when ApnaCircle was launched, majority of the users wanted to use it as just another social networking portal, although he adds, “Users are beginning to realise what professional networking is and now about 70 per cent of our users use the site for professional reasons.”