Social Media & Your Job Search

Social Media wasn’t even a term 5 years ago. Where in the world did that term come from and how come it is so important to your job search? I am beginning another series of posts called Social Media and Your Job Search. I am going to be speaking on this topic on Saturday with a group of job seekers, so I thought I would share some of my thoughts with you here at Bizzia Careers. Here is a basic definition I found on Wikipedia: Social Media supports the human need for social interaction with technology… There is a lot more to the definition out there, but I liked the first part. I actually find it amazing that the term is in Wikipedia, but I digress.

The bottom line is that Social Media is here to stay. It may be a relatively new term, but I believe we are only just discovering the depth of these word. I believe Social Media will take us places and connect us to people like we have never been connected before. In terms of your job search, understand that networking online is just one form of social networking, and if you are not employing technology in your job search, you are now in the stone ages. It is a critical component to effectively connecting with people and organizations today.

A few weeks ago I facilitated a question and answer session for job seekers at a webinar. First of all, the webinar had more than 50 people on the call. Webinars in my humble opinion is another connecting tool that I have found for my business as a career coach. I can talk to 50 people in one hour and impact all 50 of them rather just meeting with one person at a time. In any case, one of the questions that was asked by a participant was “Can I contact the company and ask them the type of software they use?” My response was two-fold. First, absolutely you can contact the organization to ask about the type of software they use in the organization. The job seeker who asked the question was preparing for an interview with the company and he is a technology guy. He wanted to confirm that he had more than an idea about what type of software he would be working with. So of course he should ask that question prior to showing up for the interview.

The second part of my answer is even more important. First I asked him about his LinkedIn profile. Which he said he has, however he never uses it. Big mistake. If you have a LinkedIn profile collecting dust, your are not using all of your available tools to assist you with your job search. LinkedIn is not a silver bullet, but it is an effective one when used properly. I recommended that this job seeker go out on LinkedIn and do a search on the organization he is scheduled to meet with. Find out who from the organization was on LinkedIn and reach out to them. Contact them and pose the question about the software to them. Contact someone or some people within the department that was pursuing him as a candidate and make a connection.

That may sound a bit presumptuous to some of you, however in the market, the job market, people connecting with people is the name of the game. Chew on that for a bit and I will be back with part 2 on this series of Social Media & Your Job Search. If you are looking for some basic help with LinkedIn, check out my series on LinkedIn written a few years ago, but not much of the basics has changed since I wrote the series: LinkedIn Review.