Brazen Careerist: A Professional Social Network Cooler Than LinkedIn
August 18, 2010 by Paul Richlovsky
What: Brazen Careerist, a conversation- and idea-focused professional social network.
Why: Because you want a professional social network that is as functional as LinkedIn, but cooler and less overwhelming. And your resume might not stack up to a more experienced worker’s, but you’ve got ideas to share.
Where: www.brazencareerist.com
Who: Targeted at Generation Y/Millennials, but open to all.
With an emphasis on ideas and creating conversation, Brazen Careerist provides a forum to exhibit professionalism outside of traditional resume experience notes. Much like LinkedIn, the site makes it easy for you to create, grow, and join networks of associated or like-minded professionals. Unlike LinkedIn, the site explicitly caters to the Gen-Y crowd by trying to level the playing field against Gen X’ers and Baby Boomers on other online career sites.
Brazen Careerist lets you upload your own feeds, although integrating the feed for this blog took several minutes, which is a lifetime by today’s web standards. There were also some similar delays/glitches when trying to upload different profile photos. One of the most annoying features is the default setting that (similar to Facebook) blasts you with email: comments from one of the five networks I joined sprung into my inbox within an hour of signing up. Letting a user know that this feature exists but making the default setting NOT to get random email is a better way to welcome new brazen careerists. A professional network should understand the importance of being efficient with my email and time, no?
One of the great benefits of Brazen Careerist is that it exposes you to quality, original career-focused articles like Scot Herrick’s “fun culture isn’t fun” blog post. Not just a shocker headline, this post has a well-argued message: a disciplined work culture leads to fun, and fun without a disciplined work culture can be self-defeating or destructive.
Some other thoughts about the site:
Pros
- Presents evidence of online achievements in one place.
- Shows initiative for professional activity outside of the workplace.
Cons
- Precludes outstanding abilities that may not be demonstrable or easily qualified online (leadership, communication skills, work ethic, time management).
- Sign-up from the home page is not intuitive. Site forces you to use traditional “login” fields instead of taking you to a separate sign-up page. (Hint: Brazen Careerist editors and web developers, this is free usability feedback.)
- Your current colleagues, clients, and other associates may not know about this site because it flies under the radar next to LinkedIn.
Summary: Do your part as a Millennial and take the slingshot to Goliath by joining Brazen Careerist.
About the Author: 
Thanks Paul. We really appreciate that you took the time to review Brazen + we definitely appreciate all constructive feedback. We’re always working on improving the network and it’s reassuring to me that lots of the Cons you mention are things we are already thinking about.
Scot is such a great blogger, isn’t he? We had a chance to hang out last night in Madison, WI as part of our worldwide Crowdsource Your Career event. That’s another thing that I love about Brazen. People are taking the relationships that they make online into the Real World. What’s better than that?
Feel free to email me anytime if you have more feedback for Team Brazen. You caught our eye yesterday and we’ve been discussing your feedback ever since.
Thanks again!
Ryan Paugh (Brazen’s Community Director)
Ryan, thank you for your response and responsiveness. I am glad your network values feedback and works proactively to improve the user experience. As far as my “cons” went, the first bullet point is probably one that is inherent to any Internet application. Leadership and work ethic are hard to quantify outside of three dimensions, unless a person’s profile contains recommendations that explicitly reference those qualities. The comment was intended to be more of a general one about the complexities of what makes somebody a valuable employee; it’s not something I’d sweat.
I look forward to building out my social resume and connecting more with the Brazen network. I also hope this blog’s readers come to appreciate the opportunities it offers.
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