Jobhunters: Quick and Easy Social Media Tips!

* Twitter seems silly at first but you get better at it as you use it as a business tool.

* LinkedIn means you have your suit on. Act the part. But smile once in a while too.

* Facebook is a great research source for you, but for your friends and others also. So for biz purposes (like job hunting) create a business page and make sure there's nothing there you wouldn't want your next boss to see. And keep all politics and anything at all controversial out of it.

* MySpace is sorting things out now so there are better places to spend your time. (Time: that thing you used to have more of.)

* When it comes to searching for a job, be open to anything. Even paper classifieds may work for you. As they (Larry and Woody) say, "Whatever Works."

5 Ways to Jump-Start that Job Search!

Need some fresh ideas to re-ignite a stalled job search? Here are a few that will help.

1) Get in touch with coworkers with whom you worked well in the past, and who respect your work. Perhaps they know of an opening at the company they're working at now, or have heard of openings somewhere else. Don’t call and ask outright for work. That can make people uncomfortable. Just reconnect and update them with your status in an upbeat way. It's also better to start with people you know than to cold call or otherwise approach “strangers.”

2) Don't discount any source of jobs. Lots of people focus on the Internet these days and let it go at that. Sure there are many great resources there, such as SimplyHired http://www.simplyhired.com/, one of our favorite site, which lets you search thousands of different job sites all at once. But lots of other people are using those sources too. Also try to pinpoint sites that are geared to your specific profession (for example, Mediabistro (http://www.mediabistro.com/) has lots of jobs for writers and editors that you won't find elsewhere. Surely your profession has its Mediabistro equivalents.

3) By all means get on and use LinkedIn (http://www.linkedin.com/). We can't write an article about job hunting without including perhaps the best tool for job hunters to come along since the computer itself. Register, create a complete and compelling profile, start answering others’ questions, and become a regular presence on the site. It keeps your name in front of the people who can help you. In the case of LinkedIn, that’s 48 million of the most-connected professionals you will find on the Internet.

4) Get out of the office. There's so much you can do from home these days that some job hunters rarely leave. That's a mistake for your task at hand, but also your mental and physical well being. Push yourself away from your desk and take some "field trips." Check out local book stores, for example, and see what the latest job-hunting books have to offer. Just grab a bunch, pull up a chair and start taking some notes. How to Find a Job on LinkedIn, Twitter, Facebook, MySpace, and Other Social Networks is one book you may find useful.

5) Take some time to review your past accomplishments. It's disheartening to look for work when it sometimes seems that seems everyone else has a job, so you need to keep that self esteem high. Won awards in the past? Have you amassed letters of recommendations? Review these things them for an ego boost.

I know job-hunting is hard, and certainly there will be days when you feel discouraged. But take heart…there’s blue sky ahead. I once read that a job hunt results in a long series of NOs followed by a YES. You need to get those NOs before you can get that one blessed YES. So keep at it in ways that work for you.

The 10 Best Jobs to Get through Social Networking Sites

We think you can get just about any kind of contract work or new job with the help of one or more social networking sites. Now you wouldn’t necessarily turn to MySpace to get your next job as an actuary. Then again, LinkedIn may not be as helpful to you if you were a musician looking for new gigs. But by using a combination of these sites we’re convinced you can land that next job faster. If that job happens to be one of the following, your task is even simpler. We present these in no particular order.

1) Public Relations Manager. Whatever you want to call it: Communications Manager, or PR Director, as a professional communicator you should really be able to make your online profile sing. Just about any company has someone in a PR role and may be looking for someone just like you. Even if a company isn’t currently in the market for someone with your skills, you can keep your name in front of the right people by careful and frequent networking through the sites we discuss in this book.

2) Social Media Strategist. Of course you can demonstrate how well you know this new field by skillfully using the tools that comprise it. Executives are just starting to realize how essential it is they have someone on board who can use sites like Twitter to provide customer service, seed the market with news about their companies, dispel rumors, and much more.

3) Musician. MySpace alone justifies including musicians in this list. Thankfully, for this group MySpace came along when it did. CD sales were steadily dropping, making life as a musician more challenging than ever. Thanks to MySpace, musicians (especially smaller independent artists), can find new work and contacts, and promote themselves in ways they never could have even imagined before.

4) Blogger. Everyone’s attention span is shrinking to that of a fly’s, and sites like Twitter don’t help. But we make time to read the words of someone who can help us do our jobs better, or maybe just better understand the world we inhabit. Whether your goal is to be an independent blogger, or blog for a website or corporation, social networking sites can help you promote your work to millions of people.

5) Copywriter. With so many sites offering you the chance to let everyone know your current status, or to microblog about what’s got your gears going, writers of all types have powerful new showcases for their talents. Copywriters are just one type, but a good example.

6) Consultant/ Freelancer. If you’re in business for yourself you should be spending a good part of each workday marketing yourself and your skills. An excellent way to do this is through LinkedIn’s Answers section, where you can demonstrate your expertise in a worldwide forum, and unobtrusively include your background information just in case you’ve inspired someone to hire you.

7) Information Technology worker. Many programmers, software engineers and their managers use social networking sites; they’ve always been early adopters of new forms of electronic communications. These sites should be one of the first places you turn when you’re looking for that next IT job, as if we had to tell you.

8) Comedian. We’re going to thank MySpace again, this time on behalf of comedians for making it easier for them to promote themselves and get new gigs. And we’re not kidding around, either.


9) Web Designer. Businesses of all sizes need web designers to help them get their sites up and running, and then webmasters to keep them going. You can demonstrate your skills in this area in many ways, using social networking sites. These include the design of your MySpace or Facebook page, the portfolio you include as part of your LinkedIn profile, or the questions you answer on those ubiquitous discussion boards.

10) Marketing manager. Prove that you can sell yourself and you may have an easier time convincing someone you can move products for them as well. Social networking sites make it much easier for you to sell yourself to a worldwide audience through your words and accomplishments, and reach people who would care.

Copyright 2009, McGraw-Hill, from the forthcoming book How to Find a Job with LinkedIn and Other Social Networks