The Virtual Handshake

Anne Berkowitch, cofounder and CEO, SelectMinds
from today’’s Virtual Handshake conference.

You can download the slides from this presentation here: SelectMinds

New employment realities are weakening employee relationships: high turnover, outsourcing, telecommuting, etc.

4 types of networks: extended enterprise networks, corporate alumni networks, and intra-company networks

Corporate Social Networking is becoming best practice. SelectMinds has 45 clients: top investment banks, 2 of the Big 4 accounting firms, Accenture, IBM, premier law firms

Fortune 500 knowledge-worker companies: tech, defense, health care.

Offer:
- deployment and management of technical platform
- advisory and execution services (member participation analysis, broadcast communications, surveys, reporting)

Client successes:
Cooley Godward (law). 1 new client/ 3 active leads within 6 mos. Of launch. Highly targeted prof”l events for alumni & employees
E&Y: 25% of hires now rehires(!)
BearingPoint: employee-submitted operational improvement suggestions
Collaborative idea generation across enterprise network

Some of their clients invite ”friends of a firm” on a select basis to join the network

Variation of network across firms: Goldman Sachs alumni network is extremely active.
Some other clients do not have a strong alumni culture. Lower levels of engagement.
People like the fact that this is a closed network.
People use this primarily for business.

I can login and see what which other employees have RSVPd for a given alumni event—and can see which alums in my personal network specifically are attending.