After the UC band has played, after you receive the diploma, and after you gobble up that graduation cake, a miasma of uncertainty is waiting to make its move. This dreaded cloud is none other than career development.Fortunately, biznik.com is a free, on-line service that allows users to create profiles in order to develop contacts that will help them succeed in an ever-changing market place. However, this website is not for posting resumes or for job searching. Instead, members are able to list all of their accomplishments, strengths, education, and awards on their pages. Users are able to search within various disciplines in different cities from around the world. For example, one may need a graphic artist in Cincinnati or a web designer in Tokyo. Through a closed system of messages, biznik.com allows users to easily create a professional relationship without ever requiring a face-to-face meeting.
In addition to allowing diverse users to connect with one another, biznik.com lists upcoming business events and posts various articles on how to solidify one’s professional image. Members can also link to their biznik.com accounts on other social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter.
The vision for biznik.com is truly admirable, but I found some very crippling flaws in respects to the site’s implementation. First of all, the scope of what a user can do with the free (yet very basic) membership is limited to the items mentioned above. For better support with links, and the ability to add videos and logos to a profile, the user must buy a higher level of participation. The search tool, the very component that makes a website such as this revolutionary, is surprisingly narrow and glitch-prone. “0 Results” is a disturbingly common return, but perhaps an upgraded membership will solve that problem. Overall, I would give biznik.com a grade of C-.