Orano warns of financial problems at Niger uranium plant
The West African nation increasingly seeks new partners, such as Russia, in its mining sector.
The importance of social media for businesses became more obvious than ever last week, after the leader in the matter, Facebook, announced it was creating a separate version aimed at helping users do actual work.
Called Workplace, the platform is ad-free and not connected to users’ existing accounts. Instead, businesses sign up as an organization and pay a monthly fee based on the number of users, though this new Facebook’s feature is free for non-profits and educational institutions.
But long before this, the mining community saw the birth of its own social network: PeopleMine. The site, launched by Glacier Media and InfoMine late last year, seeks to connect individuals who work, or aim to do so, in the resources sector.
PeopleMine’s users can create a mining profile for free, which allows them to highlight their work experience and education, as well search for job opportunities and get matched with other mining professionals using the site’s specialized search tools.
One of PeopleMine’s main objectives is to empower users to develop their professional mining brand, opening the door to career advancement through inbound employment opportunities.
Despite not being advertised, PeopleMine already counts with more than 40,000 active users and it has been growing at an average of 750 new members every week, according to Johann Andrew Robertson, General Manager of Mining Business Solutions at InfoMine and one of the project’s leaders.
Like Facebook or LinkedIn, PeopleMine allows users to create a profile that can help them establish their presence in the global mining community.
One of the main objectives of this new platform, says Robertson, is to empower users to develop their professional mining brand, opening the door to career advancement through inbound employment opportunities.
“While PeopleMine is there to connect and engage with like-minded people and colleagues, those who will benefit the most from PeopleMine are job seekers, recruiters, and supplier sales staff,” he explains.
Users can highlight their work experience and education, as well search for job opportunities and get matched with other mining professionals using PeopleMine’s specialized search tools. They can then connect, communicate, post, like, comment, and share mining related experiences, thoughts and news with others.
“Groups and other advanced networking functionalities are coming very soon,” notes Robertson.
PeopleMine does not compete with established business sites, such as LinkedIn, but rather complements it, the executive adds.
“LinkedIn is an established community and has been a live forum with good mining content for a while now, but as one’s role in mining gets more specialized, the increased quality the PeopleMine community represents to its members starts to become clearer, and the community bond becomes stronger,” Robertson says.
“We’ve been providing mining services to mining’s people for over 20 years, and we’ve built in the same opportunities for mentorship, discovery of mining specific associations, and interpersonal workplace recommendations… All of these are much more tangible through PeopleMine,” he adds.
The new platform is soon to be tightly integrated with InfoMine’s other offerings, including but not limited to CareerMine jobs and resumes, EduMine courses and webcasts, TechnoMine technology reviews and discussions, MINING.com news and alerts, EventsMine events, and LibraryMine publications, videos, and other resources.
