UO > Feature > Making Connections On Line

It’s not what you know, it’s whom you know” is true in every profession. Meeting, getting to know, and befriending others is a critical step in advancing your social life or your career. Whether you aim to land a prestigious fellowship, pursue an attending spot at a popular medical center, earn a coveted position in a lucrative private practice, or get invited to present a paper at an upcoming conference, networking can make it happen.

The process of networking is defined as a social activity that forms a connection between people with similar interests who stay in touch for mutual assistance and support. Such initial contacts can occur virtually anywhere—while on rounds, in the staff lounge, at dinner parties, local medical society meetings, on the golf course, or at PTA meetings. However, following up and staying in touch with the people you’ve met is critical to establishing an ongoing relationship—a connection. Over time, such professional relationships can prove extremely useful as you explore career opportunities. Your network may yield a heads-up about a job opening, about the best place to live in the city you’re moving to, or serve as a valuable reference for a grant. Networking opens doors.

However, there is a difference between overt networking and asking for help from a network of trusted


	John Luo MD has used on-line networking sites to expand membership in his professional organization and secured a donation for a scholarship recipient. He says LinkedIn is one of the first places he would turn if he should lose his job. © 2005 steve goldstein

colleagues. Overt, or explicit, networking includes attending public events set up specifically for the purpose of meeting others, handing out business cards, and participating in industry functions, such as seminars or medical society get-togethers. Implicit networking, on the other hand, involves reaching out to trusted connections for help with a professional need. It assumes an already existing set of contacts. Most networking is done by implicit networking—95 percent, in fact—only now it is facilitated by some high tech tools.

Like so many activities, networking has moved on line. Web sites with names like LinkedIn.com, Spoke.com, ZeroDegrees.com, and Ryze.com have emerged as places for would-be networkers to mingle. Although the venue may have changed, the process is the same, says Al Lautenslager, a networking expert and the co-author of Guerrilla Marketing in 30 Days (Entrepreneur Press, 2005). “Networking on line is just like off-line networking. You still have to act interested, follow up, establish relationships, make contacts, and provide value,” he says. The difference is in how the initial contact is made.

Some doctors immediately spot the potential value of such sites. John Luo, MD, an assistant professor of psychiatry at the University of California at Los Angeles Neuropsychiatric Institute and Hospital, heard about LinkedIn and Ryze about a year ago and decided to investigate. Luo had already experienced first-hand the power of connections a few years ago when a colleague’s network helped him land several job offers. “It comes down to who you know,” he says.

With that in mind, Luo turned to LinkedIn for help on two fronts: developing psychiatric contacts in other cities to which he could refer his patients, and locating fellow physicians with a similar interest in medical informatics with whom he could network and socialize. When he did an initial search of the data base, he found about 20 fellow psychiatrists. From that list, he reached out to a colleague in San Diego and invited him to join the American Association for Technology in Psychiatry (AATP), of which Luo is past president.

Shortly after joining LinkedIn, Luo decided to tap into the site’s resources in pursuit of donated products to give to AATP scholarship recipients. His goal was to supplement the scholarship funds with examples of the latest technology.

After spotting an ingenious collapsible keyboard made by Think Outside, Inc., Luo used his LinkedIn contacts to make contact with a company representative, who was three degrees away—essentially, a friend of a friend of a friend. Once he received his contact information, Luo called to ask if the company would be willing to donate a keyboard to support AATP’s scholarship program. Just two days later, the keyboard was in his hands, says Luo. Making contact through LinkedIn worked much better than cold calls, he says. “I’ve e-mailed lots and lots of software companies [for donations] and usually never hear back from them. This works great.”

LinkedIn has also helped Luo attract new AATP members. He’s been able to increase the organization’s membership 5 to 10 percent through contacts he’s made on LinkedIn.

Today, Luo says he only checks into LinkedIn about once a month, “to see what’s new.” However, it would be one of the first places he’d turn if he were to lose his job, he says—a testament to his confidence in the strength of his on-line contacts.

Like Luo, Leslie “Les” Chun, MD, a third year resident in internal medicine at Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston, uses LinkedIn sporadically. Having earned his MBA at UCLA before entering medical school, Chun’s time in the business arena showed him how important networking is.

In business school, networking was a critical aspect of identifying and pursuing jobs and business opportunities. It was widely recognized that establishing relationships with others could be beneficial in both the short and long term. In medical school, however, there is a different mindset, says Chun. “I just have to work hard,” is the common belief, he explains, with no emphasis on networking. For that reason, most physicians he knows are neither concerned nor curious about how networking can help them further their careers, which may explain why the doctors, med students, and residents haven’t jumped on the on-line networking bandwagon with both feet.

Of the more than two million registered users at LinkedIn, only 555 appear to be in medical practice. At Ryze, where there are 250,000 users in 200 countries, 141 members claim “doctor” as their title. Of ZeroDegrees’ 375,000-plus members, 2,445 are culled using the keyword “physician,” although that doesn’t necessarily mean the individual is a practicing doctor. And at Spoke, 830 physician names were generated using “physician” as the title to search for, out of 24 million total potential on-line relationships available there.

Perhaps because such sites haven’t fully caught on within the medical field, Chun has found that instead of linking him with colleagues, LinkedIn has kept him in touch with people outside of medicine. “Not that many physicians have signed up,” he says. And yet, according to Denise Cannova of Physicians Locum Tenens, there are 650,000 physicians in the United States who potentially could. The firm, which is headquartered in Atlanta, does locum tenens hiring as well as permanent placement.

Instead, those propagating on-line networking venues are frequently information technology professionals who are sharing information and job seeking, and sales representatives looking to find a way to a new potential client. Doctors just aren’t there yet.

There are several factors behind the dearth of on-line doctors, says Chun. One is simply that “we’re slow to adopt new technologies.” Another is that physicians are more apt to investigate technology in response to a specific need or request, rather than a general goal of reaching out to meet others professionally. With precious little free time, doctors are often a practical bunch.

Doctors also fear an invasion of privacy once their personal contact information is out there in cyberspace, says Luo. “We get bombarded by pharmaceutical reps, so we tend to be leery of [adding ourselves to] mailing lists. We guard our inbox carefully.” In reality, says Ben Smith IV, the founder of Palo Alto, California-based Spoke Software, that fear is unfounded. Today’s networking sites mimic real-world networking, where friends and colleagues serve as gatekeepers, filtering out contacts and communications that do not warrant attention, he says. On line or off, such personal gatekeepers shield their colleagues from people they don’t want to hear from. Still, with limited first-hand knowledge of such networking sites, doctors are wary.

Finally, older physicians are more likely to use administrative support staff to maintain their networking databases than technological tools, Chun says. “The tide is turning, though,” he says. Younger physicians coming up through the ranks have grown up with computers and are boosting usage of and familiarity with technology.

Despite the fact that on-line networking is still catching on with physicians, recruiters are already there. A survey by the National Association of Physician Recruiters and published in a 2001 New England Journal of Medicine article found that search firms now rely more on the Internet and other forms of technology than anything else in identifying and recruiting doctors. In fact, the Internet was by far the most-used tool, followed by advertising and network database searches. Ninety percent of the recruiters surveyed say they rely heavily on the Internet to do their job and 97 percent say that such technology has improved their ability to recruit.

Recruiters are on line looking for candidates to fill jobs. Doctors who are on line have a significant advantage for being recruited, says Cannova, mainly because they are more easily accessible. Cannova is a Rockford, Illiniois-based physician recruiter with Physicians Locum Tenens.