Milestones
As I write this, on December 12th 2007, Professionelle has been
going for exactly nine months. That's a length of time that is -
dare I say it - pregnant with possibilities, at least in women's
minds! Perhaps it's appropriate, then, that it coincides with a new
milestone in our journey to build a community to support
professional working women everywhere.
Just yesterday, I registered our 700th member.
As I entered her details, I wondered to what extent she
approximated our average member. This new member - let's call her
Inez - is:
- Based in New Zealand, in Auckland
- Aged in her early thirties
- Educated to Bachelor equivalent level
- A barrister / solicitor
- Working part time
The last point to note is that Inez found us through referral
from a fellow lawyer.
If you've been around Professionelle for any time you'll know
that Galia and I love to wallow in data; analysing our ever-growing
member population from time to time is a task we particularly
enjoy. I drew the long straw and set to with my pivot tables while
Galia consoled herself by cooking up a storm to celebrate the last
day of Hanukkah.
So, taking it one step at a time, who are our members, and how
close to the norm is Inez?
Gender
Inez is a woman. So are 97% of our members.
We value our few brave male souls though! A number of them are
close friends, family and business associates. Their support for
Professionelle was evident when we sent out the Alpe d'Huez coupons
as a thank you to members who'd sent us two or more referrals. Men
may only be 3% of our members but they represented ten per cent of
those top referring members. The most prolific referrer overall,
with a fabulous tally of ten, was a man.
Global Geography
Our members are overwhelmingly from New Zealand, 92% in fact.
Inez fits that profile. Unsurprisingly, the next largest source of
members, at 6%, is Australia. A handful of other members come from
as far and wide as Canada and Samoa.
This pattern must in part reflect that our personal networks are
strongest here, and that we have worked hard to build a profile
with the media in New Zealand. Our feature articles occasionally
relate to purely NZ issues, such as the recent Kiwisaver advice,
too. Lastly, we know our dot-co-dot-nz site address sometimes makes
offshore readers wonder if they are "allowed" to join our
community. Heck, yes!
Inside NZ
Exactly two thirds of our local members are based in Auckland,
as measured generously from Pukekohe to Helensville. Again, Inez
fits the picture on this third dimension.
Wellington, including Lower Hutt and Paraparaumu, accounts for
11%. Regional North Island towns - especially Hamilton, Tauranga
and Palmerston North - add up to a strong 17%. The two main South
Island centres take care of another 5%.
The balance comes from smaller South Island towns. The
percentage of members in this area may be small but the coverage is
remarkable. If we ever take a roadtrip from Bluff to the Picton
ferry, we can stop to share a coffee with members in Invercargill,
Balclutha, back inland to Gore, up to Queenstown, on to Alexandra
and out to Dunedin. Then up the coast to Oamaru, Timaru, Ashburton,
Rangiora, Christchurch, over Arthur's Pass to Greymouth, and then a
long haul up to Nelson and finally Blenheim. Phew!
Age
Inez is aged between 31 and 35. By a short nose, that is our
largest 5 year age group, followed closely by the later thirties.
Our third and fourth largest groups are women in their forties as
can be seen in the graph below:
The average age of the Professionelle member is 39 years old and
the median age falls in the 36-40 age bracket.
Education
Well over 80% of Professionelle members hold a tertiary
qualification, ranging from advanced vocational through to post
graduate. Post graduates account for a full third of all
members.
Those with Bachelor or equivalent degrees account for the single
largest group among the tertiary qualified members. Once again,
Inez follows the norm!
Industry/Role
The way in which we collect data from members at registration
can be answered by industry or by role in an organisation. It is up
to members to choose how they describe themselves.
The major job groups that cover a little over half of our
members are:
13% Marketing and sales
11% Barristers and solicitors (hello, Inez!)
10% Consulting (excl recruitment consulting)
8% Human resources
6% Finance and financial advisers
6% Line and general management, private sector
Beyond this point there is a long tail, moving from
academia/teaching through accounting, IT, publishing/ media/
journalism to project managers, not for profits and
psychologists!
It is hard for us to discern the mix of public and private
sector with confidence. From the subset of members for whom we do
know it, however, the mix appears to run at about 3:1 in favour of
the private sector.
Work Arrangements
Here for the first time, Inez departs from the norm for our
members. As a part timer, she's in a small minority.
The most common work arrangement is full time, which covers 60%
of our members. The next most common arrangement, used by 28%, is
self-employed/ own business / contractor. These three strands go
together because contractors may be sole traders who could be
classified as self employed, while those in their own businesses
are also self employed.
Part timers constitute just 8% of our membership. "No
employment" (such as retired people, students etc) and "not stated"
form the last 5%.
It is surely noteworthy that the proportion of the more
alternative arrangements runs as high as 36%. Anecdotally, we see
that this reflects women's efforts to forge flexible working
arrangements as their lives change. The highest proportion of
flexible arrangements - just under 50% - appears among members in
their late thirties and early forties.
How our members found us
Almost two thirds found us through referral from friends,
colleagues and trusted newsletters. Galia and I of course got the
ball rolling when we launched, but it didn't take long for
registrations from people we'd never heard of, referred by others
we didn't know either, to start appearing in our system. Inez, who
heard about us from a legal colleague is, on this dimension, once
again in with the majority.
The next largest group of members, 22%, came to us via mentions
in NZ print media, whether from articles we had written or
quotations we had supplied on issues affecting professional
women.
10% of members found us through internet searches. All our
effort to produce word-rich content, and regularly update it, is
worth its weight in gold when it comes to climbing Google rankings
for free!
The remaining few percent were from registrations that did not
provide information on this item.
Conclusion
It seems that our 700th member matches the norm or average of
our members in almost all respects.
Some readers may wonder why we collect any data on our members
and what we do with it. The answer is simple: we want to be sure
that we are attracting, and continuing to attract, the sort of
women we had in mind when we developed the site. It's the acid test
of how our material and brand values are being received and
interpreted.
By the way, we absolutely will not share or sell our member
information to third parties.
The data reviewed in this report is unequivocal: the vast
majority of our members are professional working women in the kind
of careers we have often seen in our combined thirty odd years of
work experience in professional services and corporates. The
feedback we've had from our members so far (feedback that is
typically infrequent, but in-depth when it comes!) confirms that
Professionelle is addressing a number of the issues that matter and
that it is positioned to make a difference.
It's great to know that our read of the issues in professional
working women's lives is broadly right. It's even better to see our
community beginning to share successes and the seeds of new
solutions.
© Professionelle Limited 2007