Job Tip Series #3: Use Social Media Tools
This is the third article in the Capstrat series, Getting Your First Job. We hope to meet you at our Annual Networking Night, April 14 at 5:30 p.m.
Finding a job is extremely difficult and nerve-racking, let alone your first job. To complicate matters, the economy we are facing looks particularly grim for job hunters. Social networking helps you bypass the anonymity of submitting your resume among thousands in response to an online or newspaper ad. Social networking brings you closer to finding a job by allowing you to establish a relationship with the people who are actually hiring or with friends, colleagues and peers who can give you the right recommendation and contacts. Making these vital connections helps distinguish you earlier in the race for your perfect job. Haven't you ever heard that it's not what you know, but who you know? It's true.
Building a network of trusted contacts will involve reaching out to former classmates, colleagues in your industry, fellow alumni and friends. Online social networks provide an easy way to develop and solidify these connections. To engage an even broader audience, promote yourself by answering questions and letting others within your online community understand who you are and what you bring to the table. You must establish yourself as a trustworthy, valuable participant before you can expect to leverage your online relationships to really help you find your job. During this process, you will begin to develop new contacts as you engage in these discussions. Once you've established credibility - this will take time and effort - updating your status to "seeking a job" can sometimes elicit help from those now comfortable referring you to jobs.
Here are some sites that will help you get started:
LinkedIn is a professional network that allows you to connect with people you know. It also allows you to see profiles of anyone else on LinkedIn and gives you ways to connect to them. There are a few ways you can use LinkedIn in a job search:
Facebook is a great resource for connecting with friends and others and therefore can also be highly effective as a networking tool.
Twitter allows you to connect with people you don't know based on common interests. What a great way to do some networking!
Social media reflects a person as a whole, and managers want to find employees who have well-rounded professional characteristics. That being said, I must warn you that while using social media can help you land a great position; it can also harm your hunt! According to a New York Times article, "Many companies that recruit on college campuses have been using search engines like Google and Yahoo to conduct background checks on seniors looking for their first job." But now college career counselors and other experts say recruiters are looking up applicants on social networking sites like Facebook, where college students often post risqué photographs and provocative comments about drinking and recreational drug use, mistakenly believing it's relatively private. When viewed by corporate recruiters or admissions officials at graduate and professional schools, these pages can make students look immature and unprofessional, at best. What's the lesson? Don't post anything that you wouldn't want a prospective employer to see.
Do a Google search on yourself and see what turns up. Think like a recruiter - would the information gleaned in the search positively or negatively affect your odds of landing a job? Networking, information gathering and job searching are clicks away - use them in your favor to bolster your professional growth.
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