Social Media as a Career Tool

Are you connected?


Nowadays, job seekers need to incorporate social media into their job hunt.  The good news is that these tools are free (unless you want to upgrade to the premium level).  Social media refers to connecting with people via the Internet to have a discussion; it's often referred to as Web 2.0. It was the next evolution of the Internet.  It's a little more than simply emailing back and forth.  With social media tools, you can share all sorts of documents and multimedia instantly via a live chat or asynchronously [not at the same time]. 

Our nonprofit is part of a social network for employment and taps into ideas and suggestions from HR leaders.  We decided not to use Facebook since it forces you to sign-in to access the information.  However, with Twitter, you can see the "tweet feed" without logging in.  The founder also uses LinkedIn and Yahoo Connections to network with other professionals.  If our organization is able to reach 60 thousand unique site visitors annually with these online tools, imagine what they can do for you in the job hunt!  We use the following social media tools:

  • A Twitter account @Broke4Jobs,
  • A blog (Blogging4Broke),
  • An e-newspaper format called Paper.li, which feeds from our twitter lists of professional HR leaders (The Employment Social Network)
  • Scoop.it is another e-newspaper format that allows us to select from a variety of news outlets to report on the specific topic of Social Media as a Career Tool 
  • And this website

Twitter.com:  Twitter is called microblogging because you can only "tweet" 174 characters.  Be forewarned that the Library of Congress is documenting every tweet!  Also, what you tweet will end up in a Google search.  If you set up a Google Alert on your Twitter name or handle, you will find that this is true.  Google alerts are part of the gmail with Google accounts.  If you'd like to learn more about Twitter, see the Tweet Sheet created by Marci Reynolds at www.marcireynolds.com. 

LinkedIn.com: LinkedIn is a social networking site for professionals to "link up" online.  It has 75 million registered users from around the globe.  You can look for jobs, find alumni groups, and connect with former employers.  These connections can make a recommendation on your past work performance or share some information about jobs under the group discussion threads.  According to Wikipedia, connections can be used in a variety of ways:

  • A contact network is built-up consisting of their direct connections, the connections of each of their connections (termed second-degree connections) and also the connections of second-degree connections (termed third-degree connections). This can be used to gain an introduction to someone a person wishes to know through a mutual, trusted contact.
  • It can then be used to find jobs, people and business opportunities recommended by someone in one's contact network.
  • Employers can list jobs and search for potential candidates.
  • Job seekers can review the profile of hiring managers and discover which of their existing contacts can introduce them.
  • Users can post their own photos and view photos of others to aid in identification.
  • Users can now follow different companies and can get notification about the new members and offers available.
  • Users can bookmark jobs for which they would like to apply.

Listserves:  We encourage you to join the listserves provided by the professional organizations in your field of work.  Listserves are an interactive email system that allows members to ask questions and/or provide answers to the professional group.  To find out more, read the founder's experience with listserves: http://blog.brokebutnotforlong.org/join-your-professional-org/

Yahoo Connections: Yahoo.com has an email service called Connections.  It's a great way to stay connected with friends and family, and works well for staying connected with your colleagues.  By connecting, you can see when they're online in case you need to chat with them, but most importantly you can follow their professional activities.  Maybe they'll post something that you need to read to keep abreast of the latest research in your field.  Yahoo Connections also allows you to share documents and view each others' web cams, if need be.  Of course, there's a setting to prohibit connections to see what you're doing, as well.