Let’s face it– many things in life are about who you know, not what you know. Unfortunately, not everyone’s a bubbly extrovert or a natural-born LinkedIn star.

Online networking isn’t a one size fits all philosophy and what works for someone else may not work for you. Maker Peter Johnston had his own gripes with the online networking space, so he created Polywork last year and the word even landed a spot in the dictionary. Now, it’s officially out of beta. ”We started Polywork because we were frustrated by the limited ways existing professional networks allow us to express ourselves (i.e. they focus on job titles and schools attended),” says Johnston.

The Polywork team wants to empower professionals to represent who they are beyond their job titles. They believe that “by empowering people to tell their story and connect with others, we might be able to make the world more productive.” The platform’s features reflect that.

On Polywork, you don’t have to rely on vanity metrics to succeed (they don’t exist). Its “highlights” feature allows you to showcase a timeline of your proudest projects and its profile setup lets you tell the world that you’re both a software engineer and a bookworm. It also caters to the professionals that haven’t found any luck with existing tools and helps them explore more than just full time opportunities. If you’re only looking for a founder to speak on your podcast or you just need mentoring, Polywork could help.

With 28% of job seekers reporting that the job search has negatively impacted their mental health, having new players in the space doesn’t feel like a bad idea. 🤷‍♀️

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It uses existing Google Suite UI, but with added features like the ability to write, research, and view tasks all on one page. The knowledge network tool also allows teammates to see a visual mindmap of how all the documents in a project relate to each other.