I know we post a lot about Social Networking and the job search. I firmly believe that candidates who embrace the new media are going to have a long term advantage over candidates who do not. Recent statistics show that only 3% of candidates are using social media to find a job but 32% of employers are using it as a means to find candidates. Pay close attention to social networking in your job search and you may just end up with an opportunity that isn't available to everyone.
Yahoo! Hotjobs has posted this article on the subject.
How to Social Network Your Way into a Job
by By Karen Noonan, TradePub.com
Networking is a crucial component of any job search. And today's social-networking technology makes it easier than ever to network your way into the job of your dreams.
Many companies are employing social media as a means to market their products. And just as they are relying on blogs, wikis, forums, and social networking to pitch their news, they are starting look at how job seekers pitch themselves via these channels.
Use these tips to ping, tweet, poke, and post your way into your dream job or a new career.
1. Get LinkedIn to various networks.
A good rule of thumb for job searching is to make yourself visible and available. Traditionally, that means posting your resume on sites like Yahoo! HotJobs and making sure your friends and family know you're looking. But today, it's more than that. You need to become visible across the web.
Establish your web presence in various avenues, so employers can find you. Create profiles on multiple social networking sites and even consider starting a blog about your trade.
According to Paul Gillin, a social media marketing consultant and the author of "Secrets of Social Media Marketing," LinkedIn and Twitter are the two outlets you want to be sure to use as a job seeker.
LinkedIn is the place to start, according to Gillin. "The reason for that is that LinkedIn is very targeted and very focused" he says. "It's got all the tools and it's got this unique, degrees-of-separation concept where you can find people by being introduced by a common link." Finding common connections through the LinkedIn tools is a great place to start networking for a new career.
Secondly, Gillin gives high praise to Twitter as a job seeker's tool. "I recommend Twitter because it may be the fastest way to get in touch with someone you want to reach," Gillin says. "Anyone on Twitter can get a message to anyone else who is on Twitter."
Gillin notes that finding an email address for a contact within a company can be a challenge. But locating someone on Twitter and sending him or her a quick note is relatively simple. And emails to potential employers tend to be formal and somewhat wordy--these long-form emails are often ignored. But, Gillin says, "because Twitter is so brief, people tend to respond quickly on Twitter."
2. Clean up your social-networking presence.
Having a social-networking presence can be a great way to land your dream job. But it can also be a liability. Make sure your online appearance projects the image you want to share with potential employers.
HR professionals and recruiters have gotten very good at finding ways around privacy limitations when investigating job candidates. Even if you think you have a private profile, use caution.
"If you're going to share photos of yourself face down in a puddle of beer, you should choose to do that under a pseudonym," recommends Gillin. "Think of how you want to appear to the outside world."
Your online personality is as important as your resume. Just as you would proofread a cover letter or resume before sending it, edit your Facebook profile, tweets, and blog posts with the same detail.
"Spell checker is not sufficient for that task," Gillin says. "Before you publish anything online, have someone who knows the language read your website."
And monitor your behavior online as well--that is, "avoid loose-cannon behavior," Gillin says. Posting overtly nasty or vindictive comments, incorrect facts, or anything that doesn't appear polished can hurt your chances.
3. Have a distinct message about yourself.
Searching for a job is a marketing task--you are marketing yourself to a specific audience. And as with any good marketing plan, you need to develop the message that you want to get across. Define the message, and then figure out how to get that message heard. Find information that backs up the claims you make about yourself.
"It could be your words, pictures of the work that you do, or evidence of your achievements," Gillin says. "Then you promote those. You use the various social-media tools to push that out."
It's important to show employers what you've done. Post it on your Facebook page, tweet about it, etc.
4. Be honest.
"12 Essential Tips for Success in Social Media," a marketing brief focused on how to effectively engage through social marketing, urges social networking participants to be honest.
"One characteristic of social media is that people are more aggressive about reading between the lines to interpret other people's intentions. And they're remarkably savvy about it. ... If someone suspects you're in some way misrepresenting yourself, they'll use any of the tools available to investigate your past postings across the blogosphere to sniff out what you're really up to. It happens all the time, and it severely undercuts the credibility of anyone exposed as a shill. Whether you're launching your own social media site or just participating in discussions around the Web, be conspicuously honest and straightforward about who you are and whom you represent."
Creating a Facebook profile about your accomplishments is a great tool, but only if you have actually achieved the success you post about. Present yourself to the Web professionally, thoughtfully, and honestly.
5. Participate in the conversation.
Your personal web presence is incredibly important, but don't forget that your potential employer likely has its own presence as well.
According to "12 Essential Tips," the key to building influence in your community is getting involved: "You need to participate in the conversation. If you've already identified the people influencing market dialog, comment on their blogs. Write posts that track back to their blog if they allow that. Write posts that engage or challenge them on a topic that matters. Go forth and get in the conversation; don't wait for it to come to you. To be successful, you need to continually engage and develop relationships through dialog with the influencers."
Find blogs and forums within your industry and become a participant. It's possible that your future boss operates or participates alongside you. Your thoughtful comments within popular industry spaces online will bolster your credibility and improve your chances of landing your dream job.
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Facebook. Show all posts
Friday, April 2, 2010
Monday, February 22, 2010
Social Networking Etiquette
I have often wondered what the best solution to this problem is, so when Yahoo News posted this article about declining facebook friends with out offending anyone I thought I should share it.
Modern Etiquette:How to decline Facebook friends without offence
By Richard Baum
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A colleague I just met at work has invited me to be their friend on Facebook. I don't want to offend them, but nor do I want to share my candid photos and lousy Scrabble scores with someone I hardly know.
Can I ignore their invite?
"Can I be your friend?" might work as an ice-breaker among small children, but it's not a question you hear often between adults, at least not outside of Las Vegas.
Friendship, it is generally understood, is a relationship that evolves through shared interests, common experiences and a primeval need to share your neighbor's power tools.
Yet for many people, Facebook permits a return to the simplicity of the schoolyard.
Rather than inviting someone to be our Facebook friend only after we've become friends in the real world, many of us are using Facebook as a short-cut around all that time-consuming relationship building.
Why bother asking someone you've just met questions about their family, interests and ability to run a farm or aquarium, when you can simply send them a friend request and read the answers in your Facebook news feed? And so we think little of receiving friend requests after we meet someone for the first time at, say, a dinner party.
If you like the person, perhaps because they brought an excellent bottle of wine to the party, then you can accept the request in the hope of further opportunities to sample the contents of their cellar.
If you didn't get to taste the wine because they accidentally spilled the bottle over your brand new party dress, then etiquette experts would probably agree that you can decline the friend request, send them a dry-cleaning bill and humiliate them in a derisory posting to your real Facebook friends.
In the workplace, however, the dynamic is very different. The consequences of offending someone by ignoring their friend request are greater with a colleague you see every day than with a careless dining companion you may never meet again.
So why are people you work with increasingly offering to share their Facebook output?
Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher who studies social software in the workplace, said it's partly because some people just don't anticipate the ramifications of sharing their personal life with colleagues.
But it's also a function of the Facebook interface, which recommends other people for you to friend.
"Once you've connected to one person you work with you get recommendations to connect to others that you work with," she said.
Of course, many people don't have a problem with being Facebook friends with colleagues, especially those they know well. But for those who would rather keep their work and private lives separate, there are options other than ignoring an unwanted friend request.
One is to accept the invitation and then use Facebook's privacy settings to limit the flow of information between you and your new "friend." To do this, you can create a "colleagues" list from the Friends menu and then add to it your new friend. Then navigate to the privacy settings and use the "Profile Information" section to control what information people on the "colleagues" list can see.
An alternative, says workplace etiquette expert Barbara Pachter, is to suggest to the colleague that you connect instead on LinkedIn, a social network for professional relationships.
"You can just go ahead and ask them to join you on LinkedIn and hope they forget they sent you a Facebook friend request," said Pachter, the author of New Rules @ Work.
"Or you can say, Thanks for asking me. I'm keeping Facebook for my family and friends. I'm asking you to join me on my professional network instead.'"
Pachter said that whatever you do, it's important not to offend your colleague -- and that's not just because politeness is good etiquette.
"The person you offend might end up being your boss next year," she said.
Got a question about the etiquette of email, social networks and other workplace technologies? Send them to richard.baum@reuters.com or via Twitter to @rbaum.
Modern Etiquette:How to decline Facebook friends without offence
By Richard Baum
NEW YORK (Reuters) – A colleague I just met at work has invited me to be their friend on Facebook. I don't want to offend them, but nor do I want to share my candid photos and lousy Scrabble scores with someone I hardly know.
Can I ignore their invite?
"Can I be your friend?" might work as an ice-breaker among small children, but it's not a question you hear often between adults, at least not outside of Las Vegas.
Friendship, it is generally understood, is a relationship that evolves through shared interests, common experiences and a primeval need to share your neighbor's power tools.
Yet for many people, Facebook permits a return to the simplicity of the schoolyard.
Rather than inviting someone to be our Facebook friend only after we've become friends in the real world, many of us are using Facebook as a short-cut around all that time-consuming relationship building.
Why bother asking someone you've just met questions about their family, interests and ability to run a farm or aquarium, when you can simply send them a friend request and read the answers in your Facebook news feed? And so we think little of receiving friend requests after we meet someone for the first time at, say, a dinner party.
If you like the person, perhaps because they brought an excellent bottle of wine to the party, then you can accept the request in the hope of further opportunities to sample the contents of their cellar.
If you didn't get to taste the wine because they accidentally spilled the bottle over your brand new party dress, then etiquette experts would probably agree that you can decline the friend request, send them a dry-cleaning bill and humiliate them in a derisory posting to your real Facebook friends.
In the workplace, however, the dynamic is very different. The consequences of offending someone by ignoring their friend request are greater with a colleague you see every day than with a careless dining companion you may never meet again.
So why are people you work with increasingly offering to share their Facebook output?
Joan Morris DiMicco, an IBM researcher who studies social software in the workplace, said it's partly because some people just don't anticipate the ramifications of sharing their personal life with colleagues.
But it's also a function of the Facebook interface, which recommends other people for you to friend.
"Once you've connected to one person you work with you get recommendations to connect to others that you work with," she said.
Of course, many people don't have a problem with being Facebook friends with colleagues, especially those they know well. But for those who would rather keep their work and private lives separate, there are options other than ignoring an unwanted friend request.
One is to accept the invitation and then use Facebook's privacy settings to limit the flow of information between you and your new "friend." To do this, you can create a "colleagues" list from the Friends menu and then add to it your new friend. Then navigate to the privacy settings and use the "Profile Information" section to control what information people on the "colleagues" list can see.
An alternative, says workplace etiquette expert Barbara Pachter, is to suggest to the colleague that you connect instead on LinkedIn, a social network for professional relationships.
"You can just go ahead and ask them to join you on LinkedIn and hope they forget they sent you a Facebook friend request," said Pachter, the author of New Rules @ Work.
"Or you can say, Thanks for asking me. I'm keeping Facebook for my family and friends. I'm asking you to join me on my professional network instead.'"
Pachter said that whatever you do, it's important not to offend your colleague -- and that's not just because politeness is good etiquette.
"The person you offend might end up being your boss next year," she said.
Got a question about the etiquette of email, social networks and other workplace technologies? Send them to richard.baum@reuters.com or via Twitter to @rbaum.
Monday, November 30, 2009
Facebook Tips For Working Professionals.
Posted on Yahoo! Hotjobs, I liked this article for it's practical advice. This time of year, when more people are spending time being social and gearing up for the holiday and the end of the year you may find that social networking is the best medium for focusing your job search. The following are tips for the working professional, but they are good to keep in mind for any step of your job search and career.
Facebook Tips for Working Professionals
by Doug White, Robert Half International
To friend or not to friend, that is the question.
As more people embrace Facebook and other social media websites for business purposes, the already fine line between what's professional and what's personal continues to blur. It can be difficult to determine which work-related contacts to connect with and what content to share. Here is some friendly advice:
Let your boss make the first move. According to a new Robert Half survey, nearly half of executives polled said they are uncomfortable getting Facebook friend requests from people they manage.
Regardless of how much rapport you have in the office, your supervisor simply might not want to connect with employees on personal networking sites. Avoid awkwardness by waiting for your boss to reach out to you first. And if you choose to accept the friend request, make sure you don't post anything you wouldn't want him or her to see!
Protect your privacy -- and your professional image. Familiarize yourself with Facebook's privacy settings. Remember: Unless you use this feature, every word or image you post can be seen by all of your Facebook friends. Do you really want coworkers and clients to view your vacation photos?
Adopt a better-safe-than-sorry approach by creating a separate "work" list and limiting the content you make accessible to those contacts. You can even go a step further and customize your settings to block specific individuals from viewing certain sections of your profile, such as photos of you and your friends.
Exercise good judgment. This common-sense message bears repeating: Don't be your own worst enemy. If you have a bad day, cool off before clicking. Badmouthing your boss, a colleague, or a hiring manager through Facebook is a highly risky move that's come back to haunt many professionals. Similarly, if you're currently employed (and you want to remain so), think twice before writing status updates about your search for a better job. In addition, avoid becoming a fan of potentially controversial people or products, or taking online quizzes (for which there are no privacy controls) that could be deemed unprofessional.
Consistently monitor your online reputation. Managing your so-called "digital footprint" requires more than merely monitoring what you post. Check your Facebook account regularly to keep tabs on the information others are broadcasting about you.
You'll want to act quickly if someone makes an inappropriate comment on your Facebook wall ("Steve, are you still working for that boneheaded boss?") or identifies you in an embarrassing photo. You can easily delete comments posted on your wall and untag yourself from pictures by clicking "Remove Tag" under the image. You also might contact the person to express your displeasure and politely request that he or she keep your professional reputation in mind in the future.
While Facebook enables savvy professionals and job seekers to build key connections, there are also many pitfalls to sidestep. By taking the tips highlighted above, you can be sure that Facebook helps -- not hinders -- your career.
Robert Half International is the world's first and largest specialized staffing firm with a global network of more than 360 offices worldwide. For more information about our professional services, please visit rhi.com. For additional workplace articles and podcasts, visit workvine.com.
Facebook Tips for Working Professionals
by Doug White, Robert Half International
To friend or not to friend, that is the question.
As more people embrace Facebook and other social media websites for business purposes, the already fine line between what's professional and what's personal continues to blur. It can be difficult to determine which work-related contacts to connect with and what content to share. Here is some friendly advice:
Let your boss make the first move. According to a new Robert Half survey, nearly half of executives polled said they are uncomfortable getting Facebook friend requests from people they manage.
Regardless of how much rapport you have in the office, your supervisor simply might not want to connect with employees on personal networking sites. Avoid awkwardness by waiting for your boss to reach out to you first. And if you choose to accept the friend request, make sure you don't post anything you wouldn't want him or her to see!
Protect your privacy -- and your professional image. Familiarize yourself with Facebook's privacy settings. Remember: Unless you use this feature, every word or image you post can be seen by all of your Facebook friends. Do you really want coworkers and clients to view your vacation photos?
Adopt a better-safe-than-sorry approach by creating a separate "work" list and limiting the content you make accessible to those contacts. You can even go a step further and customize your settings to block specific individuals from viewing certain sections of your profile, such as photos of you and your friends.
Exercise good judgment. This common-sense message bears repeating: Don't be your own worst enemy. If you have a bad day, cool off before clicking. Badmouthing your boss, a colleague, or a hiring manager through Facebook is a highly risky move that's come back to haunt many professionals. Similarly, if you're currently employed (and you want to remain so), think twice before writing status updates about your search for a better job. In addition, avoid becoming a fan of potentially controversial people or products, or taking online quizzes (for which there are no privacy controls) that could be deemed unprofessional.
Consistently monitor your online reputation. Managing your so-called "digital footprint" requires more than merely monitoring what you post. Check your Facebook account regularly to keep tabs on the information others are broadcasting about you.
You'll want to act quickly if someone makes an inappropriate comment on your Facebook wall ("Steve, are you still working for that boneheaded boss?") or identifies you in an embarrassing photo. You can easily delete comments posted on your wall and untag yourself from pictures by clicking "Remove Tag" under the image. You also might contact the person to express your displeasure and politely request that he or she keep your professional reputation in mind in the future.
While Facebook enables savvy professionals and job seekers to build key connections, there are also many pitfalls to sidestep. By taking the tips highlighted above, you can be sure that Facebook helps -- not hinders -- your career.
Robert Half International is the world's first and largest specialized staffing firm with a global network of more than 360 offices worldwide. For more information about our professional services, please visit rhi.com. For additional workplace articles and podcasts, visit workvine.com.
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