Women are still not advancing their careers on par with men, according to over half of HR directors questioned for a survey by recruiters OfficeTeam. This is perhaps not surprising considering only 19% of FTSE100 board positions are currently held by women. I received a press release with the aforementioned and other depressing facts about women in the workplace (a topic I’ve touched on before) while the chances of my own current work contract being renewed grows slimmer by the day.

Things are improving – at least there are more jobs to apply for than when I was last searching and a close friend is in the same boat. ‘Don’t tell Natasha you’re starting to job search,’ Hot Danish warned. As usual, I ignored his advice. And Natasha and I have discovered that by sharing job leads we’ve doubled them, particularly as, even though our current job titles are the same, our career backgrounds are not.

Ten-year-old networking site LinkedIn is now the tool for connections that lands many the job they’re after. Indeed, I was recently contacted by a recruiter through LinkedIn and when I discovered that job was based in Berlin (‘You’re not leaving me,’ HD said), I put the recruiter in touch with a few other of my personal LinkedIn contacts.

LinkedIn is effective because it’s all about who you know and utilizing those connections so I was shocked when one usually supportive friend ‘unlinked’ me after seeing that I’d checked out her LinkedIn profile. Perhaps the Latin writer Publilius Syrus’ maxim, ‘Prosperity makes friends, adversity tries them,’ still holds true…