Getting Found: Social Media for the Job Seeker

There’s a rapidly expanding list of resources available to the job seeker to find work, with dedicated sites such as Chinwag, Only Marketing Jobs and NMA Jobs for the Digital Marketing and Social Media sector.

These sites all utilise tools such as Twitter and LinkedIn to build communities and broadcast their latest jobs (join and follow them…), but what about using Social Media to paint YOUR public profile to SELL your skills and help you get FOUND. I think if you’re going to spend some time doing this, then LinkedIn and Twitter are the place to do it. They’re the key tool s that I use on the other side of the fence to find job seekers and broadcast my jobs. (My LinkedIn | My Twitter) )

LinkedIn:
Anyone can sign up for LinkedIn, throw a basic profile together and do nothing with it… That’s not going to get you anywhere. LinkedIn is an excellent opportunity to paint a skilled, professional profile of yourself. It should contain all your recent relevant experience, job titles, descriptions, companies, url’s and provide a synopsis of what you can do best.

Sell yourself… If you’re conducting your own job search then why not give hiring managers and recruiters the chance to find you, remember the people search shows search results in relevance order so write about what you do using keywords and that perfect job might just find you. In a punchy way it should contain as much info as your cv!

Use Groups… Search for groups that are relevant to your skill sets and job area, some of the groups have 200,000+ members, so take part in discussions and again, get your name in front of people, build your network and increase that chance of being found.

Connect… If people have been happy to engage in conversation and discussion in the groups then invite them to connect, you never know what relationships might bring. This could be B2B contacts, future clients, people to learn from, people who’re hiring?

Broadcast… If you’re in a position where you can, broadcast the fact that you’re looking from your status update, if you have been taking part in groups, connecting with people then you have a greater chance of getting referred or recommended for new roles.

Twitter:
Again, anyone can sign up and send 10 random tweets, but you will not get anything from Twitter without investing a little bit of time in actually engaging with people in the communities that you live/work/breath, do not under estimate what can be achieved with twitter, I know several people that have found some really priceless relationships and i have a few of my own.

Peronalise it… People buy from and hire People, so a bit of personality is a good thing. Twitter gives you 140 characters to describe yourself in your profile settings. Also, I recommend using the url field to link to your LinkedIn profile, add a profile pic, and the 140 character description of you and what you do.

Download Tweetdeck… For me Twitter doesn’t quite make sense without it, start here…!

Engage… Status updates that talk to 100,000,000 people but say nothing don’t add value, but finding content that will interest others will, so read NMA, Revolution Mag, Mashable or whatever you trade read and tweet interesting things, You can set up searches and RT (retweet) other peoples links, reply and comment on peoples posts and you will gain followers and build a network of listeners.

Use Hashtags… Many users have a column in their twitter app to find interesting tweets, I have a search ‘#socialmedia’ and ‘#digital’, but also #ukjobs #jobs #web #SMUK might be worth a look. If you then tweet and use a hash tag, people that aren’t yet following you will find your tweets and hopefully pick up on your interesting content.

Conclusion: Spend some time, ENGAGE and be part of it, Build YOUR personal brand,and reap the REWARDS.

5 connections and 10 followers probably isn’t going to get you very far, but it might? Ultimately we’re talking about a numbers game and how to maximise the chance of being found, but I’m confident that a few weeks into your campaign you will have found job leads and found communities that share opportunities and referrals. Social Media is all about transparency and sharing, so why not share things you find and help others too.

Blog by Barry Furby | Fresh Resources, Social Media Jobs

Also on this subject:
- Recruitment Waters, Simon Lewis
- Social Media tools: Job Hunt, Shannon Boudjema