Guys Are More Social than Women in Cosmetics Industry

Men working in the cosmetics industry are more savvy at online professional social networking than women, but the reverse is true for women in the ranching and tobacco industries.

Those findings may seem counterintuitive, but that’s what data researchers at LinkedIn Corp. found after looking at the activities and networking ratios of the professional network’s 100 million members.

Of course, some would say that if you’re spending your work hours tooling around on LinkedIn, you’re probably not breaking the speed barrier to make that sales call, finish that report or solve that problem in the lab.

Still, LinkedIn senior data scientist Scott Nicholson said in a blog post that overall, men are more savvy than women at networking, but even the data team was surprised after examining specific industries.

“Women are more savvy networkers in the ranching industry. Men are more savvy networkers in the cosmetics industry. Wait, what? That was exactly our reaction when we saw the initial results for our latest data insights blog post on the differences in social networking behavior between men and women,” Nicholson wrote.

The team also looked at how men and women network at the company level.

“In the U.S., some examples of companies where males are the more savvy networkers are Walmart, Kaiser Permanente, and, surprisingly, Mary Kay (a majority female company),” he said.

In the US, women are savvier networkers than men in: alternative dispute resolution, tobacco, alternative medicine, ranching and international trade and development.

But men are savvier than women in medical practice, hospital and health care, cosmetics, law enforcement and capital markets.

The data team said several factors could explain the results, including seniority, job function and the need for the minority gender to work harder at making connections to break into or get ahead in the particular industry.