職場圈子 領英擬爭取藍領用戶

After a few years out of the workforce to care for his youngest son, Klaus Thorsen spruced up his LinkedIn profile. Not that un­usual, you may think. After all, the careers networking site has more than 330m registered users. Except that Mr Thorsen is a north London carpenter hoping to find contacts and employment on a site where job titles such as “builder” are more typically used to describe someone who creates online communities than a construction worker.

爲了照顧最小的兒子，克勞斯•索爾森(Klaus Thorsen)幾年沒有工作，之後他把自己領英(LinkedIn)上的簡歷潤色了一下。你可能會想，這沒什麼特別的。畢竟，這個職業交流網站擁有逾3.3億個註冊用戶。除了一點，在倫敦北部做木匠的索爾森想在這個網站找份合同，而在這裏像“builder”（建築工，或網絡工程師——譯者注）的崗位名稱更常用來描述創辦網上社區的人，而不是建築工人。

Mr Thorsen admits he would never have joined LinkedIn if it were not for his partner, Karen Fugle, an executive coach to architects. “If you’re not in the corporate world it’s a big step, [it’s] baffling,” she says. That is not to say Mr Thorsen does not use technology; he is an enthusiastic Twitter user, deploying it to keep up with industry news and finds work through referrals from local websites such as , a neighbourhood social network.

索爾森承認，如果不是他的伴侶凱倫•富格勒(Karen Fugle)的話，他永遠不會加入領英。富格勒是一名面向建築師的高管教練，她稱，“如果你沒在企業的圈子裏，這真的是一大步，（這）令人困惑。”這並不是說索爾森不會使用高科技；他是Twitter的活躍用戶，利用這個社交媒體網站關注行業新聞，並通過（一家社區社交網站）之類的當地網站的轉介找工作。

If LinkedIn has its way, however, more people like Mr Thorsen will bec­ome members of the site — without nudges from executive coaches — and ex­pand the numbers beyond the throngs of accountants, lawyers and marketers already signed up, to include delivery drivers, waiters and joiners.

不過，如果領英的新嘗試取得成功，就會有更多像索爾森一樣的人成爲其會員——不需要高管教練來勸說——使其會員羣體超出註冊會計師、律師和市場銷售人員，擴大至納入送貨司機、服務員和木匠。

Allen Blue, co-founder of LinkedIn, wants the site to shed its elitist image as an exclusive club for knowledge workers. LinkedIn last year bought Bright, a US job site that uses a scoring mechanism to match job hunters with em-ployers. The acquisition brought jobs to the site from sectors beyond LinkedIn’s traditional white-collar heartland.

領英的共同創始人艾倫•布魯(Allen Blue)希望該網站能擺脫精英形象，不再只是爲知識型員工打造的專屬俱樂部。去年，領英收購了美國求職網站Bright，後者利用一種評分機制來撮合求職者與僱主。此次收購給領英帶來了其傳統白領核心外其他行業的求職者。

“Now if you do a job search, there are lots of possibilities,” says Mr Blue. “There’s a growing number of blue-collar workers on the site.”

“現在如果你想求職，這裏有更多可能性，”布魯稱，“在領英找工作的藍領工人越來越多。”

The company certainly talks big. There are billions of workers in the world, says Mr Blue, and LinkedIn has ambitions to sign up every single one of them. “We consider all of these [as] people we can deliver value to,” says Mr Blue. Moreover, data compiled from LinkedIn members’ profiles could, for example, help employers plan where to build a factory or distribution centre based on the local labour force’s skills, he argues.

領英顯然豪情萬丈。布魯稱，世界上有數十億的工人，領英的雄心是讓他們每一個人都成爲註冊會員。“我們把他們所有人都視爲我們能傳遞價值的對象，”布魯稱。此外，他認爲，從領英會員簡歷編制出的數據也有作用，比如，可以幫助僱主根據當地的勞動力技能，計劃在哪裏建設工廠或配送中心。

LinkedIn hopes to create the world’s first “economic graph”, its version of Facebook’s “social graph”, coined to describe its networks of friends. As Jeff Weiner, the chief executive, has explained: “We want to digitally map the global economy, identifying the connections between people, jobs, skills, companies and professional knowledge — and spot in real-time the trends pointing to economic opportunities.”

領英希望打造全世界首張“經濟圖譜”，即領英版的Facebook“社交圖譜”，後者描述朋友關係網。正如領英首席執行官謝韋納(Jeff Weiner)所解釋的：“我們希望數字化地繪製全球經濟地圖，識別人、職位、技能、企業和專業知識之間的聯繫——並實時發現指向經濟機會的趨勢。”

While LinkedIn is, in Mr Blue’s words, “professionally paranoid” about Facebook’s plans to create a professional networking channel, called Facebook at Work, he believes users prefer to keep personal and work lives separate.

儘管用布魯的話來說，領英對於Facebook計劃打造的職業人脈渠道Facebook at Work感到“職業恐慌”，但他認爲，用戶更喜歡把個人生活和工作分隔開來。

Mark Perry, reader in computer

布魯內爾大學(Brunel University)計算機科技教授馬克•佩裏(Mark Perry)稱，科技公司的發展有一個模式，領英也不例外。“受過高等教育的高收入者是初期對象。他們對企業是有利可圖的。科技公司吸引低收入者的動力不那麼足——直到早期採用者已轉向其他新鮮的東西。”

science at Brunel University, says there is a pattern in tech companies’ development, shared by Linked­In. “Educated higher earners are targeted first. They are lucrative for companies. There is less incentive to get those that are lower earners until the early adopter market has moved on to something else.”

佩裏稱，問題在於硅谷精英往往不那麼瞭解藍領工人，他們傾向於爲像自己一樣的羣體開發產品和服務。

The problem, he says, is that people in Silicon Valley tend to know less about blue-collar workers, and they dev­elop products and services for people like them.

儘管如此，佩裏相信，領英擁有一個擴大覆蓋面的良好機會，原因在於就業的個人主義本質，一些社會學家認爲這一本質導致“無保障無產階級”(precariat)的出現，這一工人羣體的特點在於極度沒有安全感：“勞工市場的發展方向是零工時合同以及工會成員減少，這意味着人們將更多地利用科技來創建社交網絡。”

Nonetheless, he believes Linked­In has a good chance of extending its reach because of the individualistic nature of employment, which some sociologists say has led to the emergence of the “precariat”, a group of workers characterised by extreme insecurity: “The direction of travel in the labour market is zero-hours contracts, [and] declining union membership, which means people will increasingly use technology to create a social network.”

招聘諮詢機構Reed的主席詹姆斯•裏德(James Reed)贊同這個觀點。“就業市場的重點在於靈活性。人們過去希望在僱主那裏得到培訓。現在他們自己培訓。一切都成了‘自我公司’。”

James Reed, chairman of Reed, the recruitment consultancy, agrees. “The jobs market is focused on flexibility. People used to expect training from their employer. Now they do it themselves. It’s all about ‘Me Plc’.”

智能手機正使科技（特別是社交媒體）更便於那些不在常規辦公室上班的工人使用。荷蘭足球運動員德米•德澤烏(Demy de Zeeuw)近期在領英上登廣告尋找新東家。

Smartphones are making technology, social media in particular, more accessible to those workers not based in a conventional office. Dutch footballer Demy de Zeeuw rec­ently advertised for a new club on LinkdedIn.

連鎖餐廳——比薩馬上諾(PizzaExpress)的人力資源總監阿曼達•安德伍德(Amanda Underwood)對使用領英招聘餐廳員工很樂觀。她表示，儘管領英並非餐飲行業進行招聘的傳統渠道，但是“通過鼓勵我們的餐廳團隊使用領英，他們自己的網絡將形成勢頭，成爲一筆寶貴的資產”。

Amanda Underwood, human resources director at PizzaExpress, the restaurant chain, is optimistic about using LinkedIn to recruit restaurant staff. She says that while LinkedIn is not tradit­ionally used for recruitment in the hospitality sector, “by encouraging our restaurant teams to use LinkedIn, their own networks will gather momentum and become a valuable asset”.

也有人對此持懷疑態度。企業人類學家約翰•柯倫(John Curran)觀察發現，在領英，人們會覺得自己不得不遵守主流的專業文化。領英創建了其會員要遵守的文化規範，這可能對服務員、水管工或機械工的入會構成障礙。柯倫稱，人們的印象是，領英的所有會員都是身穿西裝和在辦公桌工作的。“如果你無法與這些職業規範契合，你可能不想註冊領英。”

Others are doubtful. John Curran, a business anthropologist, observes that LinkedIn is a site where people feel they must conform to the prevailing professional culture. LinkedIn has created cultural norms that members observe, which may prove a barrier to, say, waiters, plumbers or machinists joining. The perception, he says, is that all members are suited and desk-bound. “If you can’t fit into these professional codes, you might not want to join.”

柯倫稱，社會學家歐文•戈夫曼(Erving Goffman) 1959年出版的《日常生活中的自我表現》(The Presentation of Self in Every Day Life)一書中闡釋的“印象管理”(impression management)，也存在於社交媒體。“你向受衆表明你的身份。人們精心打造自己的網絡，以表現出自己的成功。”如果有一個你覺得不夠級別的人與你相關聯，你可能會覺得這“污染你的網絡”、玷污你的身份。

“Impression management”, described by sociologist Erving Goffman’s 1959 book The Presentation of Self in Every Day Life, is present in social media, he says. “You convey your identity to an audience. People curate their network to show they are successful.” If someone connects with you whom you deem inferior it could be seen as “polluting your network” and contaminating your identity.

同樣，企業策略專家尤安•森普爾(Euan Semple)也懷疑，像英國這種階級意識分明的國家，是否會接受一個讓藍領和白領交流的職業社交網站。Reed金融、法律和銀行部門的業務主管羅伯特•拉塞爾(Robert Russell)利用領英尋找可能的候選人，他擔心，如果該網站將所有的工人囊括其中，品牌影響力將被稀釋。不過，僱主點評網站Glassdoor的高級總監薩曼塔•朱潘(Samantha Zupan)認爲，這些顧慮都不會是問題。