“Jesus” is the least connected word on LinkedIn.  How did Dan Zarella, author of “Zarella’s Hierarchy of Contagiousness,” arrive at this interesting but seemingly apropos of nothing conclusion?  As usual, he studied the data.  (The method is less important than the result.  I trust Mr. Zarella’s methodology only to a certain point.  I believe his pseudo-scientific approach allows him to identify correlations, from which he makes logical conclusions.  But that’s as far as it goes.)

The blog post where he published his findings (which I’ll divulge shortly) is not completely clear about the meaning of “connected words.”  What I think he means is this: Words that appear in the titles and summaries of LinkedIn profiles and how they correlate to the number of people that person is connected to.

At any rate the conclusion about the word “Jesus” is no surprise, given the purpose of LinkedIn.  What’s more surprising is the most connected word, which is “recruiters.”

Besides the fact that it’s plural (go ahead, imagine using it in a sentence) I find it interesting that LinkedIn holds fast to its original roots of being a place to network for job opportunities.  When I joined in 2004 I did so because I was considering looking for a full-time job.  I ended up changing my mind about job hunting and didn’t use my account for several years.

Somewhere around 2007 or so it started to get more press as a professional networking site I started using it again.  In 2009 when I was promoting my business, Avarra Solutions, I started using it heavily and seeing it’s real value to small businesses as a professional social networking tool.

Go ahead and look at the infographic Dan posted.  Look at the top nine words on the Most Connected Words list.  Four of them have something to do with job hunting.  Three are related to networking.  So still after all this time, the most heavily connected people on LinkedIn have something to do with looking for employment.

So if you’re looking for work, or if you’re thinking of hiring someone in your business, LinkedIn is definitely still the place to be.