Job Hunting with Social Media
Social media can be a great resource to any job hunter in this rough market. With Facebook and Twitter, you are able to search out who’s hiring, post resumes on your profiles, talk to complete strangers about your work history, and make a wonderful first impression. This article will be especially important for the older generation of job hunters who did not grow up in this digital and internet age. Social media, such as Facebook and Twitter, is not as daunting as it might seem.
Sure, you could post your resume on CareerBuilder and Monster.com and hope that someone just happens to see it, and then just happens to make the first move, but it’s probably not going to happen. You could also spend hours diligently searching these two job giants, send a few resumes out to potential jobs, and hope that they take the time to look at yours as well as the thousands of others they received for the same job.
Gone are the days of simply posting your résumé on CareerBuilder, e-mailing former colleagues and trolling company websites for open slots. These days, if you’re serious about being hired, you really put your computer and PDA to work. That means getting word out on social sites like Facebook and MySpace, sending instant job-search updates via messaging feeds like Twitter, and meeting new people who might be able to lend a hand through Web-networking outfits like LinkedIn. – Time Magazine
Using LinkedIn to Find a New Boss
One of the greatest free tools that you can use as a job hunter is LinkedIn. It’s a social networking platform, much like Facebook, that allows you to update your job history and basically create a resume on a personal profile. LinkedIn will also hook you up with networking groups, people you might know, employees at jobs you’d like to work for, and employees of past jobs you’ve held.
How-To Get Started on LinkedIn
Getting started with LinkedIn requires nothing more than your name, an email address, and your password. It’s that easy. There is no reason to fret about not knowing what to do, because LinkedIn, as every other social site, walks you through set-up step by step. Once you log in, you will be directed to enter your personal and professional information. Have fun with it. Be professional, but also be light and approachable. It’s ok to gloat about your achievements, but it’s also advisable to be humble. If it’s easier, you can even import your resume directly to your profile.
Getting started on LinkedIn will probably take a good 30 minutes, depending on how much work history you want to include, and how personal you want to get. Choose a profile picture that is appropriate, but still fun.
Always allow LinkedIn to pull all of your contacts from you email. This is how your networking will begin.
Join Groups
LinkedIn is all about networking, and in the job search that is the golden ticket. It’s always about who you know, and seldom about what your resume looks like. Groups is what fuels LinkedIn, and it’s how you will connect with the right people to get you your next job.
After you allow LinkedIn to pull your email contacts, go through each one and see if there are any from your past that you’d like to reconnect with. Contact those people and just say hello, letting them know that you’ve just joined LinkedIn and might need a little advice navigating it. Just open the lines of communication.
If you have entered your previous jobs into your profile, LinkedIn will pull up other employees of those companies for you to connect with, which is a great opportunity to see what everyone else is up to and if anyone has a new gig that you might like to speak to them about.
In LinkedIn search, you can look for organizations, companies, or groups that you might want to get involved with. If you’re interested in working for Ford Motor Company, search for it. In the top right is the search box. Enter your search term and select whether you’re looking for a person, company, organization, or group. LinkedIn will pull up all results, and you’ll be able to connect with every employee of that company.
Be Proactive
No matter what social network you are using, you have got to be proactive. This is job hunting, and it’s work. You have to get the connections and meet the people who will get you your next job. Much like searching the newspaper or hitting the streets every day to find a job, social media involves jumping online every day and making it work. It’s no different than any other job hunting method, it’s just done sitting at your desk.
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