The Virtual Handshake

I saw the headline in my daily Google alerts and it just about put me into shock: "Online networking used by half of U.S. managers". So I decided to check out the story.

As they say, there are "lies, damn lies and statistics". Turns out this headlines based on a survey of members of career website 6FigureJobs.com. Can you say "selection bias"?

OK, I don't want to be too hard on the author of the article. The data says exactly what it is, it's just the headline that's a little misleading. The rest of the article reinforces exactly what we've been talking about the past couple of years:

"We expect this trend to grow dramatically and evolve further as more and more senior-level professionals familiarise themselves with blogging and online networking services," said Steve Purello, general manager of Workstream Career Networks, the company behind 6FigureJobs.