LinkedIn UK boss: Don’t underestimate the power of in-person
Janine Chamberlin believes networking in real life is key to building trusted relationships and improving collaboration
In this instalment of our weekly video series, My Business Leader Secret, we talk to Janine Chamberlin, who leads LinkedIn in the UK, about the power of in-person networking in an age of hybrid work.
Her secret is that although LinkedIn is all about online networking, “you shouldn’t underestimate the power of being in person to build relationships”.
Janine Chamberlin has been at LinkedIn for more than 16 years. She started out as an ad tracker and then advanced her way up through a variety of departments. She’s been country manager in the UK since 2021.
LinkedIn is owned by Microsoft and headquartered in the US, which is where the core product is engineered and coordinated from. However, Chamberlin and her team has latitude to implement some of their own ideas in the UK.
She has just opened an experience centre at its office in Farringdon, central London, which is the first of its kind in LinkedIn’s global empire. The space is designed to foster collaboration and knowledge-sharing in the new world of hybrid work. Its centre piece is a huge theatre that holds 150 people, but it also has meeting rooms, breakout areas and an open plan work area.
It’s designed for curated events, leadership roundtables and interactive workshops on subjects such as AI. The centre will also enable better knowledge-sharing of LinkedIn data insights and access to experts across issues like hiring, B2B sales and marketing, as LinkedIn partners with other businesses.
Even though LinkedIn is all about virtual, online professional networking, clearly the company wants a stake in in-person networking too.
“Being in person is really key to building trusted relationships,” says Chamberlin, “and it helps to improve collaboration and it leads to faster decision making as well. Just recently I was at a networking event where I met somebody who is an important relationship for me in the context of our business. At the end of our conversation, I got this person’s business card with their personal mobile phone number and the message, ‘if you ever need anything, give me a call’.
“Now I think if we had been networking online or only connecting virtually, that would have never happened. And that really that for me is the power of in person networking.”
