# Professional Networking Sites: Which to Use and How to Use Them Canonical URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/professional-networking-sites/ Markdown URL: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/professional-networking-sites.md Entity type: Article Last updated: 2026-07-07 Language: en Primary audience: professionals improving networking at work Owner: Headway Skills Contact: https://headwayskills.com/contact/ ## Short answer A clear look at the professional networking sites worth using - LinkedIn and the narrower alternatives - plus what to write, who to contact, and what comes next. ## Key facts - Title: Professional Networking Sites: Which to Use and How to Use Them - Category: Networking - Primary skill: Networking - Related skills: Communication, Influence - Primary keyword: professional networking sites - Source page: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/professional-networking-sites/ ## What this page covers - A clear look at the professional networking sites worth using - LinkedIn and the narrower alternatives - plus what to write, who to contact, and what comes next. - Practical guidance for professional networking sites - How this topic connects to Networking ## Detailed explanation The professional networking sites worth your time come down to LinkedIn plus one narrower platform matched to what you actually do: Handshake, WayUp or Prosple while you are studying, Wellfound for startups, Behance for creative work, GitHub for developers, Xing in German-speaking Europe, and Meetup or Reddit for looser, conversation-led contact. That is the short answer, and it is where most articles stop. The longer answer is that picking the site was never the difficult part. Almost everyone searching this already has a profile somewhere; what they do not have is a reason for anyone to reply. The questions below are the ones that start after the list ends. ## What are the best professional networking sites besides LinkedIn? LinkedIn is the default for one reason, which is scale. A 2026 roundup of LinkedIn networking data from LinkedCraft puts membership at roughly 1.1 billion, with around 310 million people using the platform in a given month. Everything else is narrower by design, and narrower is often what you want: a smaller room where people share your work is easier to be noticed in. Xing is the long-established professional network in German-speaking Europe. Wellfound, formerly AngelList Talent, is built around funded startups and puts funding stage, equity and team size on the listing itself, which a general job post rarely does. Behance is where recruiters and creative directors browse creative work, and its project format lets you show your process rather than only the finished piece. GitHub works as a professional network for developers whether or not anyone files it under that name. Fishbowl runs on candid, industry-specific conversation, often semi-anonymous. Meetup and Reddit are the loosest of the group: no profile to optimize, just groups and threads where you can ask a real question and get an answer from someone already doing the job you want. ## Is LinkedIn enough on its own? For most people starting out, yes, with one caveat. Look again at the gap between those two LinkedIn figures: roughly 1.1 billion members, around 310 million of them active in a given month. On the largest professional networking site there is, most profiles are sitting still. Presence is not participation, and one site you genuinely use beats four you have signed up for. The caveat is field-specific. If your work has a real home elsewhere — design on Behance, code on GitHub, early-stage companies on Wellfound — that is where the people who could [vouch for you](/knowledge/influence/build-good-reputation-work/) are actually looking. Add that one. Not all of them. ## Do professional networking sites actually help you get a job? They help indirectly, which is easy to mistake for not helping at all. Novoresume's roundup of networking statistics reports that 24% of job seekers hear about openings through their professional connections, and that 70% of workers got their job through a personal connection to someone already inside the company. The same roundup puts candidates [arriving by referral](/knowledge/networking/referral-networking/) at four times more likely to reach an interview than those applying cold. The mechanism behind those numbers is worth more to you than the numbers. Data collected by Wave Connect shows why employers push referrals so hard: referred hires start sooner, roughly 30 days against 40 to 45 for job-board hires, and are considerably more likely to still be in the role a year later. A referral is faster, cheaper and lower-risk for the employer, which is why one person willing to vouch for you counts for more than [a well-formatted profile](/knowledge/networking/how-to-optimize-your-linkedin-profile/). The site does not get you the job. It gets you within reach of the person who can. ## Which professional networking sites are best if you are still studying? Handshake is built for exactly this position. It connects students with employers, internships and entry-level roles filtered by school, major and interest, and runs virtual career fairs and employer Q&A sessions where the barrier to speaking with a recruiter is far lower than a cold message. WayUp covers similar ground for students and entry-level candidates. Prosple leans toward graduate programs and early-career roles, with filters for industry, location and employer size — useful when you do not yet know whether you want a company of sixty people or six thousand. Their advantage over LinkedIn at this stage is not the feature list. It is that everyone on them expects to be approached by someone who has not done the job yet. That removes most of what makes people hesitate. ## What should you write when you contact someone you do not know? Give the person a reason that is about them rather than about you. The pattern that works is short: where the connection comes from, whether that is a shared course, a talk they gave or a project of theirs you read; one specific thing you want to ask or say; and no favor attached to a first message. The common mistake is leading with the thing you actually want — the referral, the introduction, the job. Reaching out with a concrete reason is normal and usually welcome. Reaching out with a request attached to a stranger is not. One practical note: a recurring complaint about LinkedIn is that free accounts limit how often you can attach a personal note to a connection request. If you cannot write one, send the request and follow it with a message once it is accepted, rather than sending a bare request and hoping. If the sticking point is that you are not sure what you would offer anyone, settle that before you write rather than after. [Seeing where your skills stand](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) gives you something specific and true to open with, and these are habits you can build rather than things you either have or do not. ## What do you do after someone accepts? Follow up quickly and personally, within about a day, while the context is still fresh for both of you. Then, for the most part, leave it alone. The purpose of the contact is not to extract something now; it is to be a real person in that field later, when it matters. The workable version of maintenance is tiered. A small inner group you stay genuinely close to. A wider circle who would recognize your name and answer a message. And a long tail of dormant contacts you are not maintaining at all, which is normal rather than a failure. Trying to actively [keep up 500 connections](/knowledge/networking/maintain-professional-network/) is why most people abandon this entirely. ## Do you have to post content to get anything out of it? No, and the belief that you do stops a lot of people who would otherwise be perfectly good at this. Posting is one route to visibility and it suits people who enjoy it. It is not the mechanism behind the referral numbers above, which describe conversations between individuals rather than audience size. A hundred people who know what you do is worth more than a thousand followers who do not. If posting feels like performing, skip it: comment occasionally on other people's work, answer questions in a Meetup group or a subreddit where you genuinely know something, and put the effort into direct conversation instead. ## How do you use these sites without feeling fake? By dropping the transaction. The discomfort people describe — that networking feels like using other people — is an accurate reading of transactional networking. It is not an accurate reading of the alternative. The alternative is unglamorous and effective: be useful before you need anything. Pass on information someone would want. Share something you know how to do. Introduce two people who should know each other. Answer a question properly. None of that requires an outgoing personality, and none of it requires pretending to be anyone. It does require doing it before you need the favor, which is the part that takes some discipline. If the discomfort does not disappear completely, that is ordinary — starting small is a legitimate approach, not a lesser one. ## The skills that make any of these sites work Read those answers back together and the same thing sits underneath most of them. Very little of the difficulty was the platform. It was knowing what to say to someone you have not met, knowing what you hold that is worth offering, and being willing to make contact before you need anything in return. **Networking**, in the sense that matters here, is relationship-building rather than list-building, and the distinction is practical rather than philosophical. It gives you a usable way to see the contacts you already have — the small group you actively maintain, the wider circle who would answer you, the dormant remainder you are not maintaining — and the two habits that turn a click into a contact: offering something before you need anything, and following up quickly with a personal note. It also treats the awkwardness as normal and starting small as a real strategy. **Communication** is what every one of these platforms actually runs on, because everything on them is written. The useful part is knowing what writing is for — messages that let the other person answer in their own time — and when a conversation would serve you better. The rest is the mechanics that make a short message land: lead with the point, be clear and direct, keep it brief, and send it only to the person it is for. **Influence** is what a profile is quietly attempting. It is built on being known for something specific rather than listing everything you have ever touched, and on delivered work that makes the claim credible. It also covers the move most people avoid, which is asking: volunteering to prepare or organize something, putting the question to someone who might say no, and following up on what people offered. None of the three is something you either have or do not. They are buildable, and they sit inside **a set of twelve** that recur across almost any job. A free seven-minute assessment scores all twelve, which beats guessing — it tells you [which of these to build](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/) first instead of working on all three at once. Some of this may already describe how you operate: the person who answers properly when someone asks a question, or who remembers to send the thing they said they would send. Those are the same behaviors, just not yet pointed anywhere in particular. None of it asks you to become an outgoing person or to enjoy self-promotion. It asks for a small number of specific habits, done on purpose, by whoever you already are. They also tend to carry more weight later than they do now — the further into a career you get, the more of what reaches you arrives through people who know your work rather than through applications — and the useful part is that this is a short list of learnable habits, not a personality you would have to acquire. By reading this far instead of signing up for another site and waiting, you have already done the part most people skip. ## Start by knowing what you bring The only thing left is to find out which of these you already do well and which you do not. The Job Skills Test is a **free** self-assessment of the twelve work skills this article has been circling — the ones that decide whether your messages land, not which site you send them from. It takes about seven minutes, and what comes back is a read on where you currently stand across all twelve, along with the one or two that would make the most difference for you to work on next. **[Get my skills profile](https://assessment.headwayskills.com/)** *Seven minutes, twelve skills, and nothing to prepare beforehand.* ## Who this is for - Professionals building practical workplace skills - Readers looking for specific, usable work advice - Managers, educators, and coaches supporting career readiness ## Common questions ### What is this guide about? A clear look at the professional networking sites worth using - LinkedIn and the narrower alternatives - plus what to write, who to contact, and what comes next. ### Which Headway skill does this connect to? This guide connects primarily to Networking. It also relates to Communication, Influence. ### What is the recommended next step? Use the free Work Skills Test to reflect on which work skill to improve next. ## Related pages - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/communication.md - https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/influence.md - https://headwayskills.com/work-skills-test.md ## Citation guidance Use the canonical page when citing this content: https://headwayskills.com/knowledge/networking/professional-networking-sites/ Preferred summary: "A clear look at the professional networking sites worth using - LinkedIn and the narrower alternatives - plus what to write, who to contact, and what comes next." ## Change log - 2026-07-07: Content collection version published.