Social Media & Your Job Hunt

If you’ve been on the job hunt in the past decade, then you know the digital era has taken over the game. The internet has replaced the newspaper job listings and can reach thousands of applicants at a time. If you’ve used any of the online job boards, then you know the ease of access to reaching potential managers and connecting them with your resume. One tool many job seekers are now utilizing is social media! Social media can be a powerful weapon on your job hunt that can get you ahead of the crowd. Before a job ad is spread across multiple job boards, it’s usually posted to the company’s website and social media sites. Clean Up Your Personal Brand! –On a job search, not only are you trying to sell yourself, but your personal brand as well. Before you start searching, make sure you go and take that drunken photo off of your Facebook profile, and remove that mean tweet about your old boss. If you’ve been with the same company for the past 5 years, it doesn’t hurt to update your LinkedIn profile with your newest skills as well. Remember, you want to show your best self to future employers so update your profile photos with a professional photo too! What are you looking for? – When it comes to looking for possible openings on social media, it’s important to know where to look and what you’re looking for. Twitter : Twitter has popularized the hashtag, so if you’re looking to see current openings start by using the hashtag, #hiring. Many companies on Twitter will post new positions with that hashtag before it even goes up on their website. You can also search key terms or phrases and Twitter will show you the “Top”, “Latest”, and other features relating to tweets with key words you’re searching for. Facebook: By using your search bar on Facebook, you can also search for hashtag terms as well as companies in your specific field. By liking a page on Facebook, it gives you the leg up on your competition by seeing when they post a position. LinkedIn: Linkedin is by far the most professional social media network out there. It’s important to make sure your profile is clean, concise, and states what you’re looking for and who you are. The best way to search for positions on LinkedIn is by changing your search box drop down to jobs and typing in the position you’re looking for. Another great way to utilize LinkedIn is by joining groups. There are a number of job groups available where hiring managers and community managers will go in and post their most recent openings for the companies they work for. Google+:  By using the G+ search bar, if you type in a specific keyword that you’re looking for, it brings up a number of different communities you can join, as well as the most relevant posts to your keyword. From here, you can add hiring managers to your circles, or follow company pages to see the latest updates as well.   You found a position you’re interested in, now what? – The best way to go about applying for the position you’re interested in is through sending a private message to the person who created the post. You don’t want to send them all of your information at once as it may come across as unprofessional. Once you’re about to send a private message, treat your message as an email. Tell the person that you are very interested in the position and you want to hear more about it. Provide your email or any contact information for them to send you details and then ask for the hiring manager’s email. Once you get an email with all of the information, it’s better to send your resume through email right to the hiring manager.

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