Social Media
How to use Twitter,
Facebook and
Linked-In etc. to look
for Jobs
CC 3
Careers Centre
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retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical,
photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without permission in writing from Edge Hill
Careers Centre.
Katharine McKinnon
Employer Liaison Officer
September 2013
Information obtained from the National Association of Student Employment Services
(NASES) – 2012 Conference
How To Use Facebook, Twitter
and LinkedIn to Find a Job
Why use social media?
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZQzsQkMFgHE
Social media has is playing a vital role in boosting job search. Are you too
benefiting from the popular social networking tools that have become a rage
these days? Well, not only jobseekers but employers as well are garnering the
benefits of social media for finding suitable candidates. Among other social media
platforms, Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn are the three most popular social
networking websites that you can use to boost your job searching process. To
make the most of these social networking tools, you need to be informed of the
strategic ways for networking your way into a job or career of your interest.
To find out why you should use Social Media to find a job have a look at this on
You tube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7iyzZoYBzNU
Given below are some important tips on how to use social media for maximum
benefit in your job search. Have a look.
Let People Know You Are Searching for a Job
It is a good idea to keep people in your network informed that you are looking for
a job. It’s even better to let them know what type of job you are looking for.
Whether you are using Facebook, Twitter or LinkedIn, tell people that you in
search of a job position. If you keep them informed, they will keep you in mind
and tell you as soon as a new position opens up. The job information that you get
from your contacts can really boost your job search.
Don’t Be Afraid of Networking with Friends on Facebook
As compared to social media websites like Twitter and LinkedIn, Facebook
happens to be more powerful when it comes to connecting with friends, coworkers and colleagues. Friends that know you on Facebook will be more helpful
in finding you a job you are looking for or providing you with some valuable job
related information. Spend some good networking with friends on Facebook.
Make Your Facebook Profile Private
The profile information that you fill out on Facebook is visible to everyone by
default. If you don’t want employers to see your personal updates, you can set
your profile to private. All you need to do is go to ‘Account’, click Privacy Settings
and choose ‘Friends Only’. In this way, only those with who you are friends on
Facebook will be able to see your personal updates and profile information.
Search for Information about Hiring/Recruiting Managers
These days almost every large employer is on Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn.
To boost your job hunting, you can first find information about the employers you
have targeted. Smart employers will certainly keep their Facebook profile private.
However, you can search for the information on other social networking websites
and be informed about the new job openings coming up. In addition, you can dig
out more valuable details about your targeted employers.
Hyperlink Your CV
Also remember to add the link to your personal profile on Twitter and LinkedIn.
This helps employers to find your contact information if they are willing to get in
touch with you. Don’t add a link to your Facebook profile, as it is private available
only to your friends. Keeping profile information on Facebook private also shows
employers that you are internet savvy. Many employers appreciate this skill.
Create Facebook Lists
Facebook allows users to create multiple lists, according to individual
requirements. So you can create separate lists for friends and professional
contacts. In this way, your professional contacts will have access to only that
information that you want them to see. To create a new list on Facebook, you can
go to Account, then Friends and then click Create a New List. Facebook allows
you to set your privacy settings according to your requirements. This is a good
strategy to be adopted by jobseekers in search of jobs.
Get Found on Google
If you want employers to find relevant information when they Google your name,
you need to be active on all the above mentioned social media websites including
Facebook, Twitter and LinkedIn. Fill out your profile information on all these sites
carefully including the industry-related keywords as well. If you have a completely
filled out job profile on these sites, employers will find your profile information in
the top Google rankings.
So, if you haven’t yet created your profiles on popular social media sites, go and
create the same now. At the same time be active on the networks and spend
some good time connecting with your network of friends for maximum job search
benefits.
3 Ways to Use Twitter to Find a Job or Change Careers
If your job search has stalled, or if you’re looking to switch it up and change
careers entirely, chances are there’s a job out there for you on Twitter — if you
know how and where to look.
Even in this economy, and perhaps despite what you’ve heard on the nightly
news, companies are hiring. Given the scale and cost effectiveness of social
networking, more and more of those hiring companies are turning to Twitter to
post job offers to a globally connected audience.
There can be a lot of noise on Twitter, and not every job that’s posted will be right
for you. Here are a few effective strategies to cut through the clutter and help you
find that dream job or make that career change you’ve been waiting for.
Search for Job-related Hashtags
When you want your tweets to be seen by a wider audience on Twitter, one
effective tactic is to include relevant hashtags in your tweets. That’s exactly what
thousands of businesses, recruiters, and human-resources professionals are
doing to make sure that their job offers are being seen by job seekers on Twitter.
While it may be effective to search Twitter for relevant keywords or phrases,
when you search for job-related hashtags you’ll find results from people who are
actively looking to fill specific job openings. For example, one of the most popular
and effective job seeker hashtags is #jobs. Organizations looking to find
employees through Twitter will often use this hashtag because millions of people
worldwide are searching on this hashtag 24 hours a day, 365 days a year.
But that’s not the only effective job seeker hashtag. Try searching for hashtags
like #hiring, or #hotjobs. You can also search for a job-related hashtag that
includes the city in which you’re trying to find a job, like #ChicagoJobs or the
industry you’re targeting, like #greenjobs. Try a few of your own permutations and
see what results you get or try any of the top 100 job seeker hashtags as
compiled by Career Rocketeer.
Find Relevant People to Follow
Another effective strategy for job seekers on Twitter is to find relevant accounts to
follow such as companies you’d like to work for, professional placement
agencies, online job listing sites, and so on.
Do you know what type of companies are almost always in hiring mode? Start-up
companies. Typically, the first order of business for any start-up is to find and hire
qualified employees. Executives and staff are juggling many roles and may not
have time to post help-wanted ads in the newspapers or on traditional job boards.
Yet most start-up companies have very heavy presences on social media sites
like Twitter.
Use tools like Followerwonk to search Twitter bios for keywords like “startup” or
“start-up.” When you find some start-ups that you think you might like to work for,
follow the accounts, engage with the individuals doing the tweeting and when the
time is right, make your pitch for employment.
By definition, recruiters are always hiring too. You can easily find them by
searching Twitter bios for keywords like “recruiter,” “staffing,” or “jobs.” Allow
yourself to be creative with the keywords you use in Twitter bio searches; you’ll
be amazed at how many people you’ll find who are relevant to your job search on
Twitter.
Network, Network, Network
Twitter is a global social network. Don’t be afraid to expand your reach and follow
people from anywhere and everywhere and from a variety of different
backgrounds. Even if you’re interacting with someone from the other side of the
globe, you never know which networks and resources that person is plugged into
that may eventually help you with your job search.
Of course, in order for people in your Twitter network to help you with your job
search, they need to know that you’re actively looking for a job. You can let
everyone know you’re in job search mode without necessarily including this
information in your Twitter bio. Consider strategically inserting job related
keywords, hashtags or phrases in your tweets, like “I’d love to work there” or
“Anyone know if that company is hiring?”
You can also network with like-minded people, who may be conducting their own
job searches on Twitter and who have useful tips to share. One of the best ways
to do this is to join Twitter chats like #JobHuntChat (Mondays — 10:00 pm ET) or
#careerchat (Tuesdays — 1:00 pm ET) and simply jump in on the conversations
and see where they lead.
What does Edge Hill University’s Careers Centre offer students and
graduates on social media?
Our Facebook Page – “Edge Hill University Careers Centre” alerts students to
part-time, casual and summer jobs, and graduates receive updates on the latest
graduate jobs and schemes as and when they are advertised. All these
opportunities are then advertised on our Vacancy System which is accessed via
our website: www.edgehill.ac.uk/careers
Follow us on Twitter: #EHU_Careers
We are following over 500 employers and re-tweet their jobs. Be careful when
composing your straplines on Twitter – we and therefore employers can see what
you have written about yourselves. Believe me there have been some shockers
How to use Facebook safely
10 Useful Tips to Personal Branding Success on Facebook
Facebook is a place to interact with friends and family online. It's great for sharing
sharing holiday snaps and video clips from your iPhone with your social circle.
But there is more to Facebook, everyone from Goldman Sachs to Aaron Sorkin
have realized this already.
Why use Facebook for Personal Branding?
Facebook has grown rapidly and now boasts some 600 million users globally. It
has become a perfect platform for B2C (business to consumer) marketing,
providing very targeted advertising opportunities based on user's likes and
associations.
Facebook is slowly moving towards a more professional and more career
oriented service. They have recently introduced changes to personal profiles,
giving more space to work and education information. Employers have checked
applicants on Facebook for years, and most people Google you before meetings
and your Facebook profile is likely to come up in searches.
The way people use Facebook is different to that of two years ago. As you get
friend requests from colleagues, customers and managers it's no longer strictly
that social network. This means there is a case for branding oneself on Facebook
just like we have always been doing on LinkedIn.
So let's cut to the chase, how do you brand yourself on Facebook?
1. Set your vanity URL
This is the first thing you will want to do to brand yourself, a vanity URL is
basically your customized domain on Facebook. Instead of
facebook.com/e2434h394oij you can get facebook.com/joeshmoe. Note that this
new vanity URL will double as your Facebook email address, it will become
joeshmoe (at) facebook.com. For the full details, check out How to set Your
Facebook Vanity URL.
2. Check your privacy settings
You will inevitably get friend requests from people you know professionally. Do
you want these to see all your pictures and videos? If not, you can either choose
to hide them from all users but a list that you set up. Or you can create different
groups of friends which will have different access to your full profile.
3. Get a professional picture
Will your Facebook picture pass the granny test? If not, upload the same one you
use on LinkedIn. Some people will disagree with me on this and say that you
should give visitors a unique Facebook experience - this is fine, just as long as
it's not harmful to your brand.
As a rule I would say the picture should be related to what type of person you
are, being an authentic representation of your personal brand. If you are on the
summit of Kilimanjaro in your profile picture, you had better be into your
mountaineering in other words.
4. Fill in professional details
You may have noticed that Facebook have 'promoted' professional information
on personal profiles. The first text after your name is now about what you do for a
living, perhaps because Facebook is gearing up to lock horns with its smaller
professional rival LinkedIn.
Put your company's name in the box and also try to state what you do (and not
what you are). This means don't use a title like 'consultant' when you could say
"managing large scale IT projects in the public sector" - which is a great deal
clearer. And don't forget to put your schools and university on there as well as
you can be found through these by old class mates (and that's hopefully a good
thing).
5. Use BranchOut as the LinkedIn of Facebook
Just to confuse you further, Facebook has a decent third part application called
BranchOut which is all about professional networking on the Facebook platform.
The benefit of BranchOut is that it allows you to search your contacts and their
contacts based on company. Let's say you want to apply for a job at IBM, if you
search for people in your network working for IBM they might be able to introduce
you to the hiring manager. You can also recommend people on BranchOut and
it's really like a Mini-Me version of LinkedIn.
It's easy to get set up on BranchOut, all you do is importing your LinkedIn profile
via the API and job's a good'n as they say. BranchOut hasn't really taken off yet
but I notice more and more of my Facebook friends joining up.
6. Add your Blog RSS
Nowadays every man and his dog have are blogging so I will assume you have a
blog somewhere on the interwebs. This could be your own blog or one that you
contribute to. To ensure that your friends and network see your updates you can
plug in the Social RSS feed straight to your profile wall. This saves time having to
share things manually and most people really enjoy reading your blog posts.
7. Useful status updates please
Instead of sharing pictures of lol-cats, try to update your status with something
useful and informative. This could be an article about your industry or business in
general or a quote from someone like Richard Branson. You are really then
showcasing what you read and where your interests lie; exactly what a potential
customer or employer wants to see. Yes it could possibly bore your friends but
they will forgive you for wanting to be a personal brand success.
8. Time to quit the games
I would advise you drop Farmville, Mafia Wars and any other games you are
active in on Facebook. The fact that you have time to play games every day on
Facebook reflects poorly on your brand, you don't want a potential customer,
employer, investor or partner to see this. Keep your games off Facebook to be
safe.
9. Look into Groups and Pages
Facebook Groups have fewer commercial features than Facebook Pages, but
they are still very useful especially for online communities. Use a Facebook group
to bring people together in your field, become a valuable contributor to that
community and promote yourself and your company. Facebook Groups let you
share pictures, video and links just like a normal account but it's all within the
group. Another benefit of groups is that they allow you to email all group
members very easily (this is not the case for Pages).
Facebook Pages are for brands, ranging from Coca Cola to Rolls-Royce and
even Brand You. These pages are similar to your normal profile but slightly less
personal and better suited for a public persona and indeed a job seeker. You get
full access to analytics tools on your Page, allowing you to see what people click
on and how they interact. Another benefit is that your page will rank high for your
name in search engines like Bing and Google and you can use it for your
professional career, keeping your personal profile locked down.
10. Use Facebook events
Just like LinkedIn, Facebook has a good events engine allowing you to write up
and invite people. This means you can put on an industry event, how about a
networking evening relevant to your field? Open it up to the public and you will
find that new people join up and help out with the organization of things. By
running events you will be positioned as a leader in your field which is obviously
handy for your personal brand success.
I hope you found this information useful – don’t be scared to use social media to
find the job you are looking for! Honestly, using social media is the present and
the future – and it does work!
Like us on Facebook: “Edge Hill University Careers Centre”
Follow us on Twitter: @EHU-Careers
We are following over 500 employers – when they tweet their vacancies we retweet them to our followers, don’t miss out – follow us!
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