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Come with me now to a place without music, games or children. The adults who gather there – 80 million of them, across more than 200 countries – do not show off their holiday photos or invite you to visit their farms. They are, in the main, sensible individuals who share information that mostly concerns their careers.
You may already be one of those people… which, of course, means you’re aware of LinkedIn.com. What you may not grasp as firmly are the benefits of the site for tax experts – and its deficiencies.
For readers for whom LinkedIn is news, a rough outline: it’s the internet’s most prominent – and, arguably, most useful – business networking website.
Members set up profiles and form connections with friends, colleagues – both former and current – and with people with whom they’ve done, or wish to do, business. It has none of the frivolous aspects associated with social networking sites; it lacks very young users (it’s over 18s only), there are no ‘how sexy are you?’ quizzes, and Hollywood has so far failed to make a movie about its creation.
Tax has a presence on LinkedIn: there are tax people and tax-based groups. Taxation, for instance, runs the UK Tax Professionals group, which boasts more than 250 members and an array of discussions. No everyone has the same experience, but LinkedIn does have the same basic worth of all, according to enthusiastic user Mark Lee.
Mark, the chairman of the Tax Advice Network, crops up regularly in this column because he’s a keen user of web offerings; he has written and lectured extensively on the benefits of LinkedIn. So, I gave him a bell, and he told me that the site’s key draw is that it has business value even if you’re not going to be active with your profile. This is different from, say, Twitter, which only adds value if you use it regularly.
‘At the very least, LinkedIn will add your name to a [searchable] directory,’ he said. ‘And your profile proves your credibility through your background, connections and recommendations [from other users].’
Being able to confirm your professional validity is a major aspect of LinkedIn, and there are a number of reasons people will hunt you down. They may be recruiters needing to fill a vacancy, or prospective customers seeking expertise. Or they may be ex-clients or ex-colleagues hoping to reconnect.
For Mark, LinkedIn is a powerful tool for building associations in his role for the Tax Advice Network and for his work running Winmark Europe’s Tax Director Network. He has more than 1,000 connections and is a member of around 50 groups.
Nevertheless, he acknowledged that the site isn’t always useful for tax experts. ‘Our profession isn’t heavily into commenting and engaging with others online, and I don’t see that changing soon. Tax audiences aren’t usually interested in entering into [online] discussion; those who join groups are often new to LinkedIn and simply experimenting with it.’
Rebecca Cave remarked that there aren’t enough tax-based groups; those that exist have yet to become essential forums – but they have proved useful for receiving advice on tax matters that extend beyond the UK, such as VAT issues affecting the EU.
Rebecca is the director of Taxwriter Ltd. An early adopter of web services (as a result of being married to a former IT wonk), she’s had a presence on LinkedIn since not long after its launch in May 2003 and says the site provides some connection to the outside world for workers who, like her, are self-employed. They can market their services and maintain relationships.
‘Working for yourself can be isolating, and LinkedIn can help you keep in touch with people – though there’s not much gossip on there,’ she said. That might change if more tax experts join the site – although it could take while. ‘The tax community doesn’t move quickly,’ Rebecca told me. ‘I think that will change on LinkedIn once a younger generation of tax professionals emerges.’
Like Rebecca, Elisabeth Hunter took an early interest in LinkedIn, but she dismissed it for being a site mainly for US users. Last summer she noticed that the demographic had changed, so she joined up, and now she uses the site ‘every day’.
Elisabeth, an associate director of share scheme specialists the RM2 Partnership, echoed Mark Lee’s point about LinkedIn providing credibility by way of displaying your credentials (‘You can’t rely on a brass plaque, no matter whose name is on it’), but unlike Mark, she believes that a user must be active.
‘There’s a need for a “pay it forward” attitude,’ she said. ‘You can’t be passive. You need to share your knowledge, and then people will give you theirs. For Elisabeth, the ability to gather knowledge appears to be a major contributing factor to using LinkedIn. It allows her to keep track of former colleagues with specialist skills, and it can be ‘a good technical resource’ through the groups.
Of the users to whom I spoke, Elisabeth was the greatest devotee, but even she recognised failings. LinkedIn (which, as a business tool, needs to distance itself from social networking services) allows a tax pro to form and maintain many relationships with counterparts and customers – but it’s each user’s open-to-all list of contacts that ‘creates the greatest tension’, said Elisabeth.
‘How does it sit with client confidentiality? I can’t answer that, but I do know it presents a challenge for many people.’
It’s that point which for me is the most – maybe the only – legitimate reason for tax advisers not to join the site.
