ETP Manalapan

This past Tuesday, the Jersey Shore Networking Group had its first meeting at the Toms River branch of the Ocean County library.

18 people attended and there were many accolades regarding how valuable in person networking is. It was deemed so valuable by individuals from 3 separate states (NJ, NY and PA) that they traveled 90 minutes or more to attend. They stated it was worth the trip and would attend again!

Thomas E. Kenny and Rod Colon presented educational material regarding career management best practices. Participation was excellent, with many attendees contributing their insights and experiences to the discussions.

After our formal meeting, most of us visited a local coffee shop for additional social networking, where we all got to know each other much better.

The library is an excellent Ocean county venue. Thus we will be planning future meetings at the same location. However, we are also searching for Monmouth county venues and ETP members to assist facilitating meetings in Monmouth county as well.

If you are interested in being on the invitation list or volunteering for future meetings please send email to JerseyShoreNetworkingGroup@gmail.com

For those that missed the meeting, below are the slides that Tom Kenny presented on the topic of Career Management at the meeting.

By Thomas E. Kenny


Until today joining LinkedIn groups has been a hit and miss endeavor. To determine what groups you wanted to join, you either had to view what groups your connections have joined or seek out one of the few web sites that attempted to list LinkedIn groups. In addition to those methods, Google was also performing a beta trial for searching LinkedIn groups.


Today LinkedIn has released a feature to be able to search within the title and description of all 90,000 groups that exist on LinkedIn.


Per LinkedIn's blog on the subject the following features exist.

1. The Groups Directory is accessible from the left navigation as well as the search drop down in the upper right part of the page.

2. Search results return groups that match, based on either the group name or a keyword in the group description.

3. Search results are sorted by group size, with the larger groups appearing at the top.

4. Groups may be filtered by category, including alumni, corporate, conference, networking, non-profit, professional, or other.

5. If you choose not to list your group in the Groups Directory, we have a setting for group managers on the Edit Group Info page.

6. To prevent abuse of the system, users may have up to 10 pending group requests at a time.


Have you ever wondered which LinkedIn group was the first? It was for fans of the podcast called "The Java Posse". This happens to be my favorite podcast. Apparently one of the developers at LinkedIn who originally developed the group feature on LinkedIn is a fan of the podcast.


Enjoy the new feature and be aware that you can only have up to 10 simultaneous pending requests to join groups.

You are cordially invited to the first meeting of ETP's Jersey Shore Networking Group!

This free event is open to both ETP members and non-members and will take place on Tuesday July 22^nd 2008 from 7:00 to 8:30 PM. We will be meeting in the Home Town Dairy Conference Room of the Toms River branch of the Ocean County Library at 101 Washington St., Toms River, NJ 08753. Click here for directions and more information regarding the library.

There will be an educational presentation and then a round table discussion on how the group may help each attendee. There will also be an opportunity for extended social networking at a near by coffee shop after 8:30 PM for those interested.

Space is limited so please RSVP to Tom Kenny JerseyShoreNetworkingGroup@gmail.com by July 16th to avoid disappointment!

If you are not local to Toms River but are within a reasonable driving distance from Toms River, why not avoid the commuter rush hour traffic on the Garden State Parkway and plan a day trip to visit the Jersey Shore. Maybe you, your family and friends (aka Board of Directors) would enjoy a day at the beach or some other attraction at the Jersey Shore.

For additional information on attractions please visit:
http://www.co.ocean.nj.us/TourismMain.aspx
http://www.oceancountytourism.com/

There are a few things to do in or around the library for your day trip party members that do not wish to attend the event.

· Huddy Park is two blocks away and is adjacent to the Toms River

· The Java Joint is the local coffee shop that is 2 blocks away

· The library has free public Wi-Fi Internet access for anybody that brings their laptop

· Due to recent renovations the library is a nice modern setting and has some very nice reading rooms as well as various rotating displays of interesting collections.

I'm sure the library will be a great venue for our group considering their tag line is "Ocean County Library - Connecting People... Building Community"

If you have any questions please contact me via E-mail at JerseyShoreNetworkingGroup@gmail.com

by Thomas E. Kenny

Jason Alba has a great blog post which has inspired me to blog on the same topic.

With over 24 million professionals on LinkedIn and all the Internet buzz it gets it's hard to believe that 51% of job seekers surveyed on JobDig's website never heard of LinkedIn!

So what does this mean?

• Not all job seekers are savvy Internet users? However, if they found JobDig's web site why not LinkedIn?
• Are to many people concerned about Internet security and having an online presence?
• Have most job seekers not gone through the mind shift necessary for owning their career? Meaning they are still posting a resume to a job board (aka black hole) and wondering why there are so little responses other then scams. Rather then networking their way into their idle next position.

On the flip side 25% did say they use LinkedIn all the time.

I believe the moral of the story is that as you build networking relationships don't assume they know what you know. Share information about what tools and groups you have found to be of value. For example, LinkedIn, the ETP Network, etc.

Although the benefit to yourself of helping others to be more successful in their careers isn't foreseeable. The investment you make in your network will pay great dividends in your future!