I ran into an interesting blog piece today, published by LinkedIn, where they were attempting to leverage their data to define a city by the professional skill set accumulated on LinkedIn. For me this was right out of the book by Mark Monmonier, “How to Lie with Maps.”
I applaud their efforts, but there is the potential to mislead individuals looking for work in any particular city. Take Kansas City, for example. It indicates that the top skill category for the city is “Computer,” which I do not disagree with at all. The problem is that the jobs in this industry are varied, and not necessarily of the “professional” sort. Most are low-paying and obtaining them can be a highly competitive situation. The rumor mill here says that most of the computer jobs border on sweat shop labor. Things are changing, but it is still not the city to go to for a well-paying, professional position in the computer industry.
That is not even the real concern that I have with this type of automated social-network analysis. It further widens the digital divide, by failing to take into account positions in other sectors, held by individuals that have no connection to either LinkedIn, or the internet. This is probably most evident in the display for New Orleans. This map defines the top skill category as “Oil & Gas,” which I think is a little bit far from the truth, as it relates to jobs available in that city, which is extremely service-oriented.
LinkedIn needs to take a step back and re-evaluate the impact of this sort of analysis, which was apparently done by a laundry detergent product researcher. There was no indication in this article that anyone from the GIS sector was included in the approach to this study, which continues to be a disappointing norm in that field. It is kind of like photography. Give everyone a camera, and suddenly everyone is a photographer. Give everyone the tools to make a pretty map, and suddenly everyone is an expert.
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